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Lift 109 and the Transformation of Battersea Power Station

A recent birthday present was some tickets to go up Lift 109, the lift that goes up one of the chimneys of Battersea Power Station to get a view from the top.

This blog is not usually about this type of place to visit, but I love a high view of London, and I have not been to Battersea Power Station since it opened following many years of reconstruction.

The blog is about how London changes and adapts, so that does give me an excuse to show the fantastic view from the top of the chimney, and to look at how the old power station has been transformed.

To start the sequence of change, here are a couple of photos taken by my father in the early 1950s showing the majority of the power station complete, with just the final south east chimney to be built (from this post back in 2015):

A 2014 image of the power station, from the same viewpoint as the above photo, with the gas holder still on the right, which would soon be demolished:

When the early 1950s photos was taken, the power station only had three chimneys. Power stations are frequently built using a modular approach so that the site can start generating electricity as soon as possible and capacity added when there is sufficient demand and an economic justification. This approach was used in the 1930’s and continues to this day.

Battersea “A”, the first phase of the power station consisted of the right hand side of the building as seen from the north bank. Construction of this part of the building started in 1929 and the station was operational soon after. The Sir Giles Gilbert Scott brick exterior work was finished in 1933.

Work on Battersea “B”, the left side of the building commenced in 1944 with the fourth chimney completed in 1955 when the power station reached the configuration that was to last until closure.

The same view in 2015:

In the above photo, the south west chimney has been demolished. The chimneys were considered unsafe and not easy to strengthen and repair, therefore all four chimneys would be demolished and rebuilt, using new materials, but to an identical design so the visual appearance of Battersea Power Station would be the same.

In 2016, the new south west chimney had been built, and the other three had been demolished:

In the above and below photos you can see the new apartment buildings under construction between the power station and the railway line to Victoria Station:

In the above and below photos, you can see through into the interior of the power station, which at the time was a hollow shell:

I have loads more photos showing Battersea Power Station as was, but cannot quickly find them. I have tens of thousands of photos, all stored in folders dated with when I copied or scanned the photos to the computer – not at all efficient for finding a specific place.

Fast forward though to March 2025, and this is Battersea Power Station today (taken from alongside the river at Battersea, the fourth chimney is there, just not from this perspective:

Time to head to the top of the chimney, and the viewing platform can just be seen at the very top of the chimney on the right of the front of the power station in the photo above.

The lift is branded as Lift 109 as it takes you 109 metres up. Passing through the ticketing area, there are several displays about the history of the power station along with a few relics from the control room where you can pretend to switch electricity to parts of London once served by the station.

Then up a lift and 39 steps to the base of the chimney, where you get in the glass circular lift that takes you to the top and just above the chimney:

At the top:

I had been waiting to book the visit for some guaranteed sunny weather, and when the sun was in the south and highest in the sky, and on reaching the top, the view really did not disappoint. Looking east along the Thames, with the edge of the chimney at the bottom of the photo:

I find high view points fascinating for a number of reasons:

They provide a view of the layout of the wider city that you cannot get a street level. The way the Thames curves on its route through the city and the way the Thames has created low ground occupied by the city, surrounded by high ground to the north and south.
The distance and relationship between landmarks looks very different when viewed from a height rather than at street level.
How the height of the city is changing. From ground level it is often hard to appreciate the number, clustering and relative height of the buildings that are springing up all the time – for example in the above photo the new apartment towers in Vauxhall can be seen along the Thames on the right.
Despite the height, small details can be seen, including their relationship with the surrounding landscape – there are some examples of this in the photos below

In the following photo, the eastern end of the Churchill Gardens estate is in the lower left corner, and up a bit on the left is the red brick Dolphin Square estate. The tower on the right of the photo is the St George Wharf Tower, the first apartment tower built in Vauxhall. This tower blocks the view of the towers on the Isle of Dogs around Canary Wharf, a few can just be seen to the left of the tower. On the left is the Walkie Talkie building, then the Shard and in the semi-foreground directly below the Shard is Millbank Tower:

A bit to the right, and more of the Vauxhall towers appear:

Then with more of the Vauxhall towers, we get the south west chimney. The American Embassy is in the left-middle of the photo, the building with the ornate decoration across the whole of the façade:

View to the west – a very different low-rise view. Chelsea Bridge crosses the Thames and Battersea Park is the open space on the left:

Royal Hospital Chelsea:

In the river in the above photo, just to the right of the barge with the crane, is one of the Thames Tideway (super-sewer) work spaces, built into the river. Work is now complete, and the work space has been transformed into an open space accessible from the path along the embankment.

The workspace covers the deep shaft that is below the surface down to the sewer, and it was one of the drive locations for tunnelling, and is now one of the combined sewer outflow interceptor points, where sewer flows will be diverted into the new tunnel.

The view from above shows an interesting relationship between this new space and the Royal Hospital, as it appears to be at the end of the wide drive up to the centre of the Royal Hospital, and terminates this drive, in the river (although the busy embankment roads are between).

This new space is now open, and according to the project’s website “Parts of the new space here will be ‘floodable’ at high tides, giving Londoners the first opportunity of its kind to dip their toe in a cleaner River Thames.” I think I will wait a while before dipping my toes in the river.

View to the south, with the southern two chimneys of the power station:

In the above photo, there is a glass roof in the middle of the core part of the power station. This is above an atrium which is part of the 500,000 sq. ft. of Apple’s London offices. Along with Apple, there is other office space, including flexible rent space. Surrounding the top are apartments.

There is currently a two bedroom apartment in the power station for rent at £7,000 per month.

To the south east of the power station, there is still open space, which will presumably be home to new apartment buildings in the coming years:

Views to the south were challenging for the camera, as the sun was very bright. I was looking for the 719 feet Crystal Palace transmitter tower, and by chance it appeared in the left of one photo. If you watch free to air TV or listen to VHF FM or DAB radio in London, your signal is almost certainly coming from this tower:

Looking back to the east in the following photo, the Barbican towers can be seen in the background on the left, in front of which is the Shell Centre tower on the Southbank, and just below the Shell tower is County Hall. In the middle is the Southbank Tower at 55 Upper Ground, and to the right of this is One Blackfriars, with its distinctive bulge half way up the tower:

Moving slightly to the right, and the old NatWest tower in the City appears to the right of the following photo. Slightly to the left of this tower, and between two smaller towers is the brick tower of Tate Modern, the old Bankside Power Station by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who was also the Consultant on the exterior design of Battersea Power Station – London’s two great brick cathedrals of power:

The London Eye and Palace of Westminster, with the Victoria Tower on the right and Elizabeth Tower on the left. Further to the left, part of Westminster Abbey can be seen, with the octagonal Chapter House:

New buildings at Victoria in the foreground, with the BT Tower in the background. To the left of the BT Tower is the 1970 Euston Tower, at the time London’s tallest office block, and from 1973 it was the home of Capital Radio:

Camden Council have just approved the plans for a £600 million redevelopment of Euston Tower, so this building will look very different in coming years.

The engine shed over Victoria Station, with one of the angular buildings which seem to be a design feature of recent Victoria developments:

The rail bridge over the river, tracks leading up to Victoria Station, and train depot / parking area:

Look to the right of the train depot area, and the benefit of a high view can be seen, with the view of the two parallel housing blocks of the Peabody Avenue estate – the 1870s estate with a length of 300 metres. The two long, parallel rows of this development are really clear from this perspective.

The Natural History Museum is in the centre, slightly to the right, of the following photo:

And moving slightly to the right, along the centre is the Victoria and Albert Museum, and just behind, covered in scaffolding, is the Queen’s Tower of Imperial College:

In the above photo, the Wembley Arch can be seen in the distance, the photo below shows a close up of Wembley, with the dome of the Royal Albert Hall to the lower right:

Across the Thames is an estate that had a key relationship with Battersea Power Station. In the lower part of the following photo are the light brown buildings of the Churchill Gardens Estate:

In the centre of the estate is a fascinating industrial relic of the link between Battersea Power Station, and the Churchill Gardens Estate:

The tower is the most visible part of a highly complex system, that took hot water from Battersea Power Station, pumped it under the Thames through specially constructed pipes, stored water in the tower, then distributed it across both the Churchill Gardens and Dolphin Square estates for heating and hot water.

The system is described in considerable detail in a book published in 1951 for the Festival of Britain by the Association of Consulting Engineers. A large book that celebrates the work of civil engineering and construction across a wide range of projects.

The introductory paragraph to the section on the Churchill Gardens project provides an excellent description:

“In the ancient City of Westminster, almost within the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, so severely damaged by German bombers in 1942, great blocks of new flats are rising to meet the needs of London’s teeming millions, thousands of whom are still living in bomb-shattered houses built a century ago.

It is perhaps indicative of Britain’s will to survive and to surmount her economic troubles, that this great new housing estate, together with, it is expected an existing group of flats – probably the largest in Europe – is to have complete space heating and water heating by means of a district heating plan, thus banishing the dust and drudgery of the open coal fire, and the nuisance caused by the delivery and removal of fuel and ash for each block of flats. This plant is unique in two respects: it’s the first public heat supply in London, and it is also London’s first district heating plant wherein the heat is the by product of electricity generation. By this means the thermal efficiency of electric generating stations may be raised from its present figure of 25 per cent, to a figure approaching 75 per cent, for stations generating both electricity and heat.”

The section in the book is titled “District Heating Scheme, Pimlico Housing Estate and Dolphin Square”, as at the time the book was put together, the estate had not yet been given the name of Churchill Gardens.

The water sent from Battersea Power Station was up to a maximum of 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93 degrees Celsius) and was stored in the tower, or to use its correct name, the “Hot Water Accumulator” before being distributed across the estate.

The following diagram shows the concept from power station on the left to estate on the right via the Thames, which from the diagram, looks a very trivial barrier to cross with pipes:

The accumulator tower and estate under construction (from a post dedicated to the system and the estate, which can be found here):

I did not measure the amount of time, but you get around 10 to 12 minutes at the top of the chimney – plenty of time to take a good look at the view, but at the end it was time to take a look inside the power station building:

The public areas are within the old turbine halls of the two halves of the station, with the central boiler house (again in two parts as the station was built in two halves at two different times) now office space with apartments at the top.

The space is basically a Westfield or Airport shopping centre, with the only industrial relics of the buildings’ purpose being found in the roof space:

As the power station was built in two different halves, there were also two separate Control Rooms – A and B.

Control Room B sort of remains, but is now a bar:

To get an impression of what the Control Room looked like, you need to walk to the back of the bar, and providing the tables lining the viewing space at the end are free, you can see some of the original equipment:

The “B” side of the station was built after the war, a time when money and materials were in short supply, so the decoration of Control Room B was very basic.

The pre-war Control Room A was much more ornate, but is now (inevitably) a private event space. You can see some photos of the space here.

I guess there is a certain industrial feel to the design, but this is really brand driven retail space:

And you need to look up to see any relics from the buildings past:

The view from the waiting area for Lift 109, which is in the pre-war “A” side of the power station, so the stone work along the walls is more ornate:

Looking down into the entrance of the building from the river side of the power station:

The large, green equipment in the centre of the floor is a 66 kilo volt circuit breaker dating from around 1955, which was part of the station switchgear – one of the very few items of equipment from the operational station left on display:

The purpose of the circuit breaker was to automatically cut of electricity if a fault in the circuit was detected, to prevent further damage to the electricity distribution network.

There were a number of these circuit breakers at Battersea, each built within a brick compartment with steel doors, so that if a circuit breaker caught fire, the fire would be prevented from spreading.

As we have seen at Heathrow in the last few days, electrical distribution equipment can at times catastrophically catch fire.

Outside the power station, there is a long walking / viewing , seating area on the top of the pier that coal barges once moored up against:

It was here that the distinctive cranes that once transferred coal between river and power station were located. These were removed when development work started, with the intention that they would be restored and replaced, however I believe they are currently in bits in an outside storage area – not in Battersea:

Reflection of the power station in an adjacent apartment block, with a randomly placed bit of equipment from the old power station:

My photos earlier in the post showed all the chimneys being replaced, and in the garden at the front of the power station is a small part of one of the original chimneys – a segment from the 1933 north west chimney:

Along the western side of the building, with on the right apartment blocks with shops and restaurants along ground level:

Towards the rear of the power station is Prospect Place, designed by the California based architectural practice of Gehry Partners, founded by Frank Gehry:

South east brick work and chimney:

It was interesting to see the transformation of Battersea Power Station. My preference would have been for alternative uses than just retail in the public space, however in reality there was no other option than funding the considerable reconstruction of the building – which had been out of use for decades – than by building apartments, offices and retail.

There had been many schemes before the current development, none of which had resulted in any work in restoring the building, and no public or private money was being made available to create a transformation such as has resulted at Bankside Tate Modern.

Whilst the chimneys are new, they are to the original design, and the good thing is that the shell of the building is fundamentally as it was – a temple to 20th century electricity generation – I just wish that there was more about this in the building, in addition to the small display at the start of Lift 109, and a couple of bits of switchgear. Control Room A should have public access rather than being a private event space, and the cranes should be restored and installed alongside the river as a starter.

Giving more prominence to the heritage of the building would help increase footfall across the site, which is probably part of the thinking behind Lift 109, as visitors to this will probably also use the restaurants and shops.

Lift 109 though is brilliant, the view from the top provides a very different perspective of London. Unless you can get to the top of one of the new apartment buildings around Vauxhall, there are no other high places to view the city from this part of London, and on a sunny day, London looks glorious – as does the brickwork of this temple to power:

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Late 20th Century Sculpture in the City of London

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In 1994, the Department of Planning of the Corporation of London published a small booklet with the title of “Late 20th Century Sculpture in the City of London”:

Whilst there has long been sculpture across the City, it was mainly statues, building decoration, and a number of drinking and decorative fountains, the late 20th century saw a significant increase in the number and diversity of sculpture, with many new works being abstract, rather than the typical “man on a plinth”.

It was the aim of the booklet to highlight this increase in number and diversity of type, and how public sculpture added to the interest and enjoyment of public spaces.

The late 20th century was also a time when large scale development became the norm with City transformation, and the use of sculpture across a development (such as at, in 1994, the recent Broadgate office complex), was part of a developers approach to selling a new development as an attractive place to work.

The City of London, as with much of the rest of London, has long been a rapidly changing and very transitory place. Buildings disappear to be replaced by new, shops, cafes and restaurants open and close, businesses move in then relocate, the 19th century building that was a bank is now a luxury hotel etc.

A work of sculpture has a visual as well as a financial value. Types of sculpture are fashionable when installed, and seem unfashionable just a few decades later. Some sculpture, such as that of Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green attract polar opposite views from the day they are unveiled.

Statues of (almost always) men, who were considered heroes at the time, are, many years later, considered either tainted or as villains.

I wondered whether any of these issues applied to the sculpture featured in the booklet, just 31 years later, so decided to trace all the works recorded in the booklet to see if they are still in place, or whether they have been moved, or lost.

Fortunately, to help with tracking them down, the booklet includes a list:

As well as a map:

Split between the two halves of the City. The maps shows that some areas are a desert for late 20th century sculpture, whilst in other areas, such as the new Broadgate development at the top of the following map, there is a large number of works, illustrating the relationship between new development and the installation of new sculpture:

So I set out to find them all, and today’s post is the first in a series over the coming months to locate all 38 works of late 20th century sculpture in the City of London, starting with:

1. Temple Gardens, Lamb Statue, Margaret Wrighton, 1971

The Lamb Statue is of a boy holding a book, and is to commemorate Charles Lamb.

Charles Lamb was a poet and essayist. Born in the Temple at 2 Crown Office Row in 1775 where his father worked in the legal profession. On the death of his father’s employer, the family consisting of Charles, his sister Mary and their mother and father had to leave the house tied with his father’s job and move into cramped lodgings nearby.

After a short spell at the South Sea Company, he moved to the East India Company in 1792, where he would spend the rest of his working life. He was employed as a clerk, a job he did not enjoy.

His first published work was a small collection of sonnets that he provided for a book of poems published by Coleridge in 1796.

But it was not until the 1820s that he achieved a degree of fame when he published a series of essays in the London Magazine under the name of Elia (a name he adopted, allegedly the last name of an Italian man that had also worked at the South Sea Company)

However in many ways he had quite a tragic life which probably influenced his writing.

After the death of his father’s employer, the family were forced to move to cramped lodgings, and Charles and his sister Mary seem to have been responsible for supporting the family, and it was the resulting pressure which probably led to his sister Mary, in a fit of insanity to kill their mother and badly wound their father.

Charles took Mary to an asylum, and to avoid her imprisonment, he agreed to look after her at home, which he did for the rest of his life.

Mary did suffer mental health problems for the rest of her life, but she also published works with Charles, including a retelling of Shakespeare for children, a book which is still published today.

He did not marry. His first proposal of marriage to one Ann Simmons was rejected which led to a short period of what at the time was called insanity, probably what we would now call depression.

His second attempt at marriage, with a proposal to an actress Fanny Kelly was rejected, probably because she could not contemplate a life which involved looking after Mary.

The boy is holding a book, with the quotation “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once”, taken from Lamb’s essay on the “Old Benchers of the Inner Temple”.

The statue was the work of Margaret Wrightson, who was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1877. She studied at the Royal College of Art, and the majority of her work was figurative sculpture, with works consisting of portrait busts and heads.

The statue was created and installed at the Temple in 1928, however it was stolen in 1970, perhaps because of the value of the lead of which the work was made. A fibreglass copy was made and placed in the gardens in 1971.

Given that the work dates from 1928, it seems strange that it is included in a listing of late 20th sculpture in the City of London, however the fibreglass replacement does fall within the late 20th century timings, although rather strange given that it is a copy.

It did though provide an excuse to visit Inner Temple Gardens on a lovely spring day.

The statue is within the hedged ring in the photo below, on the right hand side of the circle:

The long path running along the south of the gardens, between the gardens and the Embankment on the right:

At the eastern end of this long path is another work, which is not included in the listing, probably because this is a lead replica of the “Wrestlers”, with the first century original being found in the Uffizi in Florence:

Inner Temple Gardens are well worth a visit, and are usually open Monday to Friday, between 12:30 and 3 p.m.:

My next stop was at:

2. Fetter Lane / New Fetter Lane, John Wilkes, James Butler, 1988

John Wilkes was one of the major figures in 18th century political life, and he was also a Lord Mayor of the City of London.

He was active in so many ways that a book is needed to cover the breadth and depth of his life, and one was indeed published in June of last year: Champion of English Freedom: The Life of John Wilkes, MP and Lord Mayor of London.

A well as a Lord Mayor of the City where his statue now stands, he was also an MP, magistrate, author and soldier. He was a prisoner in the Kings Bench Prison after being found guilty on charges of libel.

Born in Clerkenwell in 1725, he died in 1797 in his house at Grovesnor Square. His reputation in later life had suffered due to his involvement in the Gordon Riots, where Wilkes was in charge of soldiers who were defending the Bank of England from the rioters, and as part of his defence of the Bank, he ordered the defending soldiers to fire into the crowd.

This action was seen as an act in support of the Government rather than the common people.

On the rear of the plinth are the following words: “This Memorial Statue Was Erected By Admirers And Unveiled in October 1988 by Dr James Cope”.

Dr James Cope commissioned the statue, and money for the statue was raised from present day supporters of Wilkes.

It was created by London born sculptor, James Butler, who died in 2022 at the age of 90., and there is a comprehensive website covering his life and work to be found, here.

3. 2 Dorset Rise, George and the serpent, Michael Sandle

The order in which the sculptures are numbered in the list is not always the best order to walk, and I found number 3 – George and the serpent – after leaving site number 1 – Temple Gardens.

Walking along Tudor Street, I caught a glimpse of the next work, a short distance up Dorset Rise:

This is George and the serpent, a rather stylised version of St. George, on a horse, about to strike a dragon which spirals around a vertical plinth of metal rods:

There is no date for this work in the City of London booklet, however it seems to date from 1988, and was commissioned by Mountleigh Group as part of the surrounding office development. It was the winning entry in a competition held by Unilever who at the time occupied the offices.

Unilever have long left these offices, and George and the serpent now sits in the courtyard of a Premier Inn:

George and the serpent is the work of Michael Sandle, who was born in Weymouth, Dorset in 1936.

Another of his London works is the Seafarers’ Memorial outside the offices of the International Maritime Organization on the Albert Embankment. This work has a similar bold style as George and the serpent:

International Seafarers Memorial, Albert Embankment, taken Friday, 6 March, 2020
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Robin Sones – geograph.org.uk/p/6577613

The plinth sites within a circular well, and I beleive the George and the serpent operated as a water feature as well as a sculpture.

In the following photo you can see the circular well. Just visible is a pipe leading from below the interior of the plinth to one or more of the metal poles, some of which I believe are hollow to take water up into the sculpture. To the right in the photo are the brass tongues of the dragon, out of which poured water:

There cannot be that many Premier Inns with such an impressive work of art in the courtyard:

My next stop was in Fleet Place, where there were two sculptures in the listing and on the map. The first was:

4. Fleet Place, Man with pipe, Bruce McClean, 1993

However Man with pipe by Bruce McClean could not be found. Fleet Place has had some considerable redevelopment over the last few decades, so whether these changes resulted in the lost of the sculpture, I do not know?

I walked around the square and streets leading onto Fleet Place but could find no trace, and subsequently no record of where it could be, whether I missed the sculpture, or what may have happened to it.

Fleet Place on the day of my visit:

But I did have better luck with the second work listed as being in Fleet Place:

5. Fleet Place, Echo, Stephen Cox, 1993

Fleet Place consists of a central square and a pedestrianised route leading up to Holborn Viaduct, alongside the City Thameslink station. Along the route up to Holborn Viaduct, I found “Echo” by Stephen Cox:

Echo consists of two headless torsos facing each other, and the gender of each figure is rather vague.

As well as Great Britain, Stephen Cox works in India, Italy and Egypt, and the stone used for “Echo” was Indian Granite. A plaque set into the surround dates the work to 1993, and that it was commissioned by Broadgate Properties, if I remember correctly, this was soon after the City Thameslink station was completed, and as part of the redevelopment of the buildings surrounding the station.

6. Queen Victoria Street, Baynard House, Seven ages of man, Richard Kindersley, 1980

The “Seven Ages of Man” is a wonderful sculpture, but is now in a very dilapidated area, sitting within an open space, part of the public walkway between Blackfriars Station and Queen Victoria Street, above street level, and surrounded by British Telecom’s Baynard House:

The Seven Ages of Man is by Richard Kindersley, and as well as a sculptor of works such as that at Baynard House, he is also a typeface designer and stone letter carver, and if you have ever walked down the stairs at Canning Town Jubilee Line Station, you will see his lettering telling a local history story swirling along the concrete walls to the side of the stairs.

A plaque on the small brick wall opposite the sculpture tells us that the work was unveiled by Lord Miles of Blackfriars on the 23rd of April 1990. Lord Miles was the actor Bernard Miles, who. along with his wife Josephine Wilson, was the driving force behind the Mermaid Theatre which opened a short distance away alongside Puddle Dock (see this post for the story of the Mermaid).

The theme of the work, the Seven Ages of Man is taken from Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” where the following extract tells the story of the seven ages:

Baynard House and the surrounding area, including the Mermaid Theatre are expected to be significantly redeveloped at some point in the coming years, so as well as the Seven Ages of Man, I think it would also be possible to put together the Seven Ages of City Sculpture (with apologies to Shakespeare):

The planned new development, the concept for a work of art, the design competition and commission
The design is complete and work starts
The new sculpture is installed in its new location, and heralded as a focal point for this new place in the City
The sculpture is now part of the day to day environment
The sculpture becomes so familiar to those who live and work in the area that it becomes almost invisible as they pass
The sculpture and / or the area in which it is located becomes dated, out of fashion, or lacks maintenance and falls into disrepair
The area around the sculpture is redeveloped, the sculpture disappears

The Seven Ages of Man is certainly at stage 6 in my list above, hopefully after redevelopment, it will still be part of the new area between Queen Victoria Street and the Thames.

7. Paternoster Square, Paternoster, Elizabeth Frink, 1975

I usually try and avoid having people in photos published on the blog, however this photo, taken on a warm spring day, shows how the placement of a work can become part of the life of a place, with people clustering around to meet. Paternoster is somewhere between ages 4 and 5 in my list above:

With the colour of the stone used for the plinth, Paternoster looks as if it is part of the latest development of the area north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, however it dates from the previous 1960s office development on the same site.

Trafalgar House commissioned the work from Elisabeth Frink, and it was installed on the northern side of the original development in 1975, and unveiled by Yehudi Menhuin.

When the 1960s development was demolished, Paternoster was moved in 1997 to a position on London Wall, near the Museum of London, and restored to its current location in 2003, on a new plinth to match the surrounding buildings.

The name Paternoster is curious. The work is in Paternoster Square, and prior to wartime bombing and post war site clearance, Paternoster Row once ran through the square, east to west, and the statue is just a few feet north of the original router of the street.

Paternoster Row in the late 19th century – hard to believe that this street once ran through Paternoster Square:

Harben in a Dictionary of London gives the source of the name Paternoster Row as from “Paternosters were turners of beads and lived here, hence the name of the street”.

So why is the sculpture of a shepherd and sheep rather than the traditional paternosters that Harben describes as turners of beads?

The Paternoster Square website gives a couple of explanations, including that Elizabeth Frink was inspired by a stay in Cervennes, a mountainous region in France, populated with sheep and their shepherds, alternatively inspiration from Picasso’s 1944 bronze, Man with Sheep, or perhaps the nearby cathedral inspired a deliberate confusion between pater of Paternoster (Our Father) and pastor (shepherd).

The Paternoster Square website gives the name of the sculpture as “Sheep and Shepherd”, and does not mention the name Paternoster, with the word Paternoster only used in the context given in the paragraph above.

What ever the true source of Frink’s inspiration for the work, it blends in really well in Paternoster Square, and provides a focal point for those who use the square.

Although the focus of this post is late 20th century sculpture, I did pass some new works on my walk between those listed in the City of London booklet, one of these was in the overall Paternoster Square development, where Paternoster Lane meets Ave Maria Lane:

This is “Paternoster Vents” by Thomas Heatherwick.

It was the result of a requirement to provide cooling for an electricity substation in the ground below. Surrounding the work are air vents embedded in the pavement, these draw in cool air.

The two parts of the overall work then support two tall warm air vents. Each of the parts of the overall work consists of sixty three identical isosceles triangles of glass bead blasted stainless steel.

Paternoster Vents was installed in 2002. It is surprising how many recent statues, sculpture etc. across London are there to provide cooling to infrastructure, car parks, underground stations and tunnels etc. and to do so in a way that enhances the streets above.

8. St. Paul’s Churchyard, Becket, E. Bainbridge Copnall, 1973

Enter St. Paul’s Churchyard from the south east, look to your left, and you will see Becket:

Becket, by E Bainbridge Copnall is Grade II listed, and shows Thomas à Becket, who was murdered at Canterbury Cathedral on the 29th of December 1170.

In Copnall’s work, he has fallen to the ground, as the four knights surrounding him are about to strike their fatal blows:

The work is of fibreglass resin and was originally installed in 1973, in the south west of the churchyard, having been commissioned by the City of London Corporation. The sculpture was damaged during the storm of 1987, restored, but then was vandalised in 2001, when it was moved to its current location, which is within a quieter part of the churchyard.

Edward Bainbridge Copnall was born in 1903 in South Africa and trained in London. More of his works can be seen in London where he was responsible for the relief sculptures on the Adelphi.

He died in 1973, so Becket was probably one of his last works, and he certainly captured the final moments of Thomas à Becket:

Not far from the Becket sculpture is another not listed in the City of London pamphlet, as it dates from 2012, a bust of John Donne:

John Donne was born in nearby Bread Street in around 1571and died in 1631.

He was a poet (and his works are still in print), an MP, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and many more roles in a complex life. It is from John Donne that we get the phrase “No Man is an Island”.

As with John Wilkes earlier in the post, John Donne requires a whole book to cover his life, and a couple of years ago Katherine Rundell published Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, and back in 2007 there was Donne: The Reformed Soul. Both excellent books that tell the story of a fascinating life that spanned the 16th and 17th centuries.

The work is by Nigel Boonham, and a clever part of the overall installation is within the stones surrounding the base of the plinth, which has been divided up into four segments for the four points of the compass, each highlighting a key part of John Donne’s life, for example to the east is his birth place in Bread Street, and to the west is Lincoln’s Inn where he was a Reader:

To the north of the cathedral, still in the churchyard is:

9. St. Paul’s Churchyard, John Wesley, J. Adams Acton, 1991

The statue of John Wesley dates from 1988 (although the City pamphlet gives a date of 1991 which may have been when it was unveiled), however in reality it is much older as it is a bronze cast from an early 19th century marble statue in Methodist Central Hall, Westminster.

John Wesley’s life spanned the whole of the 18th century, as he was born in 1703 and died in 1791. He was the main founder of the Methodist movement.

He also has a plaque in Aldersgate Street, recording a place and an event where he “Felt his heart strangely warmed”.

Apparently the statue is 5 foot 1 inches tall, mirroring Wesley’s real life height.

The statue is in St. Paul’s churchyard as, despite being at odds with the established Church of England, he did preach a few times in the cathedral.

As with a couple of others in this post, statues and sculptures do serve as a gateway into further research, by prompting more reading about the individual, and for Wesley, this book tells a good story.

10. Postman’s Park, Minotaur, Michael Ayrton, 1973

Michael Ayrton’s “Minotaur” was recorded in the City of London booklet as to be found in Postman’s Park, however despite a good walk around the park, I could not find the sculpture:

The reason being is that it is now just north of London Wall in the gardens between the ruins of the Elsyng Spital Church Tower and Salters’ Hall. I will cover the Minotaur when I walk through that area for the rest of the sculptures listed in the booklet.

11. Old Change Court, Fireman’s War Memorial, John W. Mills, 1991

The Fireman’s War Memorial was listed as being in Old Change Court, however today you will find it a very short distance to the west at the northern end of Sermon Lane:

The memorial was the work of the Firefighters Memorial Charitable Trust and was initially set up as a memorial to the firefighters who worked across the streets of London during the Blitz, and then extended nationally to cover the service of all firefighters during the Second World War.

It was unveiled by the Queen Mother on the 4th of May, 1991 at its original location at the northern end of Old Change Court.

The sculpture shows two firefighters working a hose, with their legs spread to the take the force of the water blasting from the hose, whilst a sub-officer is waving his arms, attracting others to assist.

The sub-officer is believed to be modelled on C.T. Demarne who was the Chief Fire Officer of West Ham Fire Station. Demarne had the original idea for a firefighters’ memorial, and this is located in the Hall of Remembrance at the Headquarters of the London Fire Brigade. Out of this memorial came the plan for the larger, public memorial to those who died in the Blitz.

It then become a memorial to all firefighters who died in the line of duty, the height of the plinth was increased, and the memorial was moved to its current location at the top of Sermon Lane and rededicated on the 16th of September 2003 by the Princess Royal.

There are currently a total of 1,192 names inscribed around the plinth of the memorial, which includes the a relief of two women firefighters (with the roles of Despatch Rider and Incident Recorder), and the names of 23 women who died:

The sculptor was John William Mills, who was also responsible for the Monument to the Women of World War II which can be found in Whitehall. The monument was originally commissioned by the Founder Master of the Guild of Firefighters and had the title “Blitz” and used a quote from Winston Churchill to describe firefighters of the war as “Heroes with grimy faces”:

The following photo is looking south along Old Change Court today. The most recent incarnation of the boarded up building was as the Old Change Bar and Restaurant, now closed, possibly as a result of the Covid period and post-covid working from home reducing the number of potential customers:

Old Change Court had a second entry in the City of London booklet, but there was no sign of the work, but I did find it close by.

12. Old Change Court, Icarus, Michael Ayrton, 1973

Walk down Old Change Court, turn left and you will find Distaff Lane Garden:

Distaff Lane Garden is a relatively new garden in the City, having opened in 2018. What I did find interesting is that it is the first time I have seen the use of What Three Words as a means of locating a City garden:

What Three Words in a really useful application for precisely specifying a location to within a few feet. What Three Words has divided the world into 3 metre squares, with each square being given a unique three word combination.

The idea being that it is easier to tell someone three simple words to tell them where you are, rather than trying to describe the location, remember street names, map references, longitude and latitude etc.

There is a mobile phone app and website, and it is also used by emergency and rescue services – it is a really useful service, and free to use.

Distaff Lane Gardens is at “memo.courier.showed”, and at this link is the What Three Words website showing the location based on these three words.

Michael Ayrton’s work Icarus can be seen through the gates into the garden, and this is the view of Icarus with the church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey in the background:

As well as Icarus, Ayrton’s other work in the City was the Postman’s Park Minotaur, now relocated near London Wall.

He had a long running fascination with the story of Daedalus, Icarus, and the Minotaur, and these characters feature in a number of his works. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, and the myth of Icarus comes from his attempt to fly using wings made by his father out of bird’s feathers, leather straps and beeswax.

Before using the wings, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly to close to the sea, otherwise the feathers would get wet, and not to fly to close to the sun, as the heat would melt the beeswax.

He ignored the warning flew too close to the sun, the beeswax melted and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.

As well as a sculptor, Michael Ayrton was also an illustrator, painter and stage designer.

Born in London in 1921, he died relatively young in 1975 at the age of 54 – a year after Icarus was unveiled in Old Change Court.

There is another version of Icarus to be seen at the Royal Airforce Museum London at Colindale.

That is the first 12 out of the 38 listed in the City of London booklet on late 20th sculpture.

Out of these 12, it is only “Fleet Place, Man with pipe, Bruce McClean” that I could not find anything about. Whether it is hidden somewhere around Fleet Place that I missed, relocated, or lost, so a good survival record for the other 11, although the Seven Ages of Man is now in an unvisited, poorly maintained and dilapidated area, which if and when redeveloped, will hopefully be moved to a more prominent and long term location.

I will carry on working through the list in a future post.

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St. Olave and the Coopers Arms Pub, Falcon Square and Silver Street

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One of the pleasures of researching posts for the blog is finding new stuff about places I have already written about. It gives me a chance to learn more, and to look at a place from a different perspective.

Searching through the three volumes of Wonderful London for a photo of a location for a future post, I came across the following photo which I had not noticed before:

The photo dates from the 1920s, and the text below the photo reads:

“The Coopers’ Arms From The Churchyard of St. Olave’s, Silver Street – In 1604 Shakespeare moved from Southwark and lodged in Silver Street, Cheapside, with one Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot. On the same site now stands the Coopers’ Arms, Falcon Square: and though the original house has gone, at least the playwright must have contemplated the little churchyard opposite every time he looked out of the window. Now the churchyard has, as it were, become fossilised by the Great Fire, for the church, St. Olave’s was never rebuilt; hence this is a genuine piece of Shakespearean London.”

I have written about the Shakespeare connection in a previous post when I looked at the blue plaque recording Shakespeare’s short residence here. There is a link to that post, along with other posts about the area at the end of this post.

And in this post, I will first look at St. Olave and then at the Coopers’ Arms.

I could not get a photo from exactly the same viewpoint, as the above photo was taken from an upper floor of the building to the south of the churchyard, and today there are also bushes at the southern end of the garden. The following photo is as near as I can get:

In the original photo, there are steps with metal railings and a gate leading down to the street. The height of the street is different today, and the garden has been extended into what was Silver Street, but there are now small steps in the same position, and the grave in the above photo behind the steps must be the middle grave in the original photo.

St. Olave was an old church, but appears to have been rather plain, and I cannot find any prints of the church, which is not surprising given that they would have had to have been pre-1666.

I found the following description of the church in “London Churches before the Great Fire” by Wilberforce Jenkins (1917):

“With John Stow the monuments in a church were the chief feature of interest, and he is rather contemptuous of the little church of St. Olave in Silver Street: ‘A small thing and without any noteworthy monuments’. The date of the original church was earlier than 1291, the date of the ‘Taxatio’ of Pope Nicholas, in which the church is called ‘Olav de Mokewell’ (i.e. Monkwell). We are told of a certain priest or curate in charge, Roger de Shardelawe, in 1343. The church was rebuilt in 1609. The income was stated to be £83, including the vale of the parsonage. It was not rebuilt after the Fire, but the Parish was joined to that of St. Alban, Wood Street. A small piece of the churchyard may still be seen in Falcon Square, and is used as a public resting-place.”

The reference to “Olav de Mokewell” will become clear later in the post.

The loss of the church was the first of three waves of church losses, beginning with those not rebuilt after the Great Fire, then the demolitions of the late 19th century as the City’s population decreased, along with Victorian “improvements” to the City, and finally those not rebuilt after the Blitz.

When you consider how many churches remain in the City today, it is remarkable to think of how many more there were before 1666.

So where was St. Olave’s? I have circled the location of the remaining churchyard in the following map, showing that it is close to the old Museum of London roundabout, and to the south of London Wall, the post-war dual carriageway that was build over part of Silver Street, and Falcon Square (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The following photo shows the overall churchyard today, with London Wall to the left. The 1920s photo was taken from one of the upper floors of the building that was on the site of the building to the right:

In “London Churches before the Fire”, the churchyard was described in 1917 as a “public resting-place”, and that is still the same today, and I had to wait for a while to get a photo without anyone sitting on the seats – phone call and smoking refugees from the nearby offices:

The view to the right of the above photo:

St. Olave’s was one of about three in the City along with one in Southwark that were dedicated to St. Olave.

In the City, only St. Olave’s, Hart Street survives.

There are some very different interpretations of the story of Olave. He seems to have been baptised in the year 1010, in the Norman city of Rouen. He then helped the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred II (also known as Æthelred the Unready) to regain his throne after the death of Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard.

Sweyn’s son was King Cnut, who took the thrones of England and Denmark in 1016, and would take the throne of Norway from Olave in 1028.

Olave was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad, when he was trying to retake his Norwegian throne.

He was declared a saint in 1031 by the English Bishop Grimketel who was working as a missionary in Norway at the time of Olave’s death.

Nidaros Cathedral, a wonderful Gothic cathedral, in Trondheim, Norway, which claims to be the world’s most northern mediaeval cathedral, is built over the site of Olave’s tomb.

St. Olave’s feast day is the 29th of July, and if you work in the Faroe Islands, it is a public holiday.

Back in the garden, in front of where the steps and gate were in the 1920s photo there is today, the following stone:

No idea whether this is a remnant from St. Olave, or from some other local building. It does not appear in the 1920s photo and post-war there was plenty of architectural stone available for uses such as this, and the water does provide a good reflection of Bastion House.

The City of London Corporation have approved demolition and redevelopment of Bastion House and the old Museum of London buildings, however their is currently a legal challenge to stop these plans, which would result in the loss of one of the two remaining towers built along London Wall completed between 1961 and 1976 (the remaining tower is Britannic House completed in 1964, refurbished in 1990 when it was renamed as City Tower).

Bastion House above the old Museum of London building:

On either side of the steps leading down from the churchyard to the small garden area alongside London Wall are two stone plaques. The first records that this was the parish church of St. Olave, Silver Street, and it was destroyed by the fire in 1666:

London Wall was a post-war, major new road to the north of the churchyard, however road changes have always taken place as the second plaque records that “St. Olave, Silver Street. This churchyard was thrown back and the road widened by eight feet by the Commissioners of Sewers at the request of the Vestry. Anno Domini 1865” and I think records the names of the churchwardens as Harris and Wilson:

Another view of the churchyard with the steps just visible between the bushes on the left, the grave seen in the 1920s photo on the right, and on the left is what appears to be the base of the grave on the left of the 1920s photo:

Before a look at the Coopers’ Arms pub, a quick look at how the area has changed. The following map is an extract from Rocque’s map of 1746. I have marked the site of the Coopers’ Arms with a red circle, and just below this, very slightly to the left is St. Olave’s Churchyard:

We can see Silver Street, and running north from Silver Street is Monkwell Street. The origins of the name Monkwell Street are the same as the 1291 name of the church mentioned earlier of ‘Olav de Mokewell’ .

Monkwell Street is a very historic street, now completely lost. I wrote a detailed post about the street at the link at the end of thios post.

Moving forward to the late 19th century, and this is an extract from the OS map, with the Coopers’ Arms ringed in red, and the churchyard ringed in orange (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

We can see that Silver Street runs into Falcon Square, which was a name mentioned earlier in the post in relation to the churchyard.

According to Henry Harben’s “A Dictionary of London”, the first mentions of Silver Street date from the start of the 14th century, when it was known as Selverstret (1306) and Silverstrete (1311). The source of the name is believed to come from silver smiths living and working around the street.

Harben does not give a source for the name Falcon Square, but gives an earliest reference as dating from 1799, which looks right, as the square does not appear in Rocque’s map of 1746.

Strangely, the Coopers’ Arms does not have the PH notation for a public house in the above map. The building I have ringed is definitely the pub, as the position on the map is the same as can be seen in the 1920s photo. There is though a pub to the left, on the corner of Castle Street and Falcon Square.

Now move forward to the post-war period, and we see the impact of bombing during the Blitz (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

The Coopers’ Arms has gone, the outline of the churchyard is still there, but so much of the buildings and streets shown only 50 years earlier in the previous map have been destroyed, and the area is now ready for redevelopment, with the dual carriageway of London Wall carving through Silver Street and Falcon Square, and the whole area being redeveloped with new office blocks, and to the north of the map would come the Barbican estate.

The outline of Monkwell Street can still be seen, but this street will also soon be gone.

I will now have a look at the Coopers’ Arms, and this is a photo of the pub I found a few years ago and used in the post on the link with Shakespeare:

The pub was destroyed during the Second World War, and not rebuilt as part of the post-war reconstruction of the area.

I cannot find when the pub was opened, the earliest references I can find to the pub date from the early 19th century. What I can be confident about is that the Coopers’ Arms shown in the above photo was the result of a rebuild after an 1828 fire destroyed the earlier pub building.

There is a very graphic account of the fire in the London Evening Standard on the 20th of September, 1828. The account is very graphic regarding the death of an occupant, and shows the almost casual approach to, and reporting of deaths, including violent death in London in the first part of the 19th century, when accidental and violent death was relatively common:

“LATE FIRE IN SILVER STREET – Yesterday an inquest was held in the vestry room of St. Alban’s Church, Wood-street, Cheapside on the body of Nathaniel Smith, aged 56 who perished in the above conflagration.

The jury first viewed the remains of the unfortunate deceased, which lay in one of the vaults under the church. The body was scorched to a cinder, and the whole of the limbs were burnt off. The following evidence was taken:

William Dix, landlord of the Coopers’ Arms, Silver Street, Falcon Square, deposed that the deceased, who had been a town traveller for many years, was a lodger in his house at the time of his death. On Wednesday night last, a little before twelve o’clock, witness locked up the house, and at that time considered everything safe.; before he and his wife left the bar to go upstairs to their bedroom, witness took off nearly all the coals in the grate, and only left a very small glimmer, which he had repeatedly done before; about 2 o’clock he was alarmed out of his sleep by cries of ‘fire’ which proceeded from the street.

He instantly got up, and could discern that the house was full of smoke, on looking out of the window, he saw a flare in the street, which seemed to be occasioned by the lower part of the house being in flames; witness, his wife, and two little girls made their escape up to the front garret, and got out of the window on the parapet of the house, before witness got on the house he ran to the whole of the lodgers rooms, and alarmed them. The deceased door was fastened, and he burst it open, and laid hold of him by the shoulder, and said ‘For God’s sake, get up, Mr. Smith, or else you will be burnt in your bed’.

The deceased, who seemed very drowsy, replied that he would put part of his cloths on and follow him to the garret window. Witness, in making his escape down the ladder, saw the deceased at a window on the second floor – he did not see him afterwards; the whole of the house was burnt down, with the exception of the outer walls.

The jury returned a verdict – That the deceased was accidentally burned to death.”

A horrific story, but so very common in London when almost every building in the city had a fire for either cooking, heating, or as part of an industrial process, when small businesses and factories sat within residential streets.

The Coopers’ Arms was back in business by 1833, as the pub was used as a mailing address for any business looking for men trained in paper-staining.

As with so many London pub’s, the Coopers’ Arms was also used as a meeting place for businesses, clubs and societies. One example was from 1857, when the City Coal Society held a meeting at the Coopers; Arms and advised that they would receive tenders at the pub for their quarterly supply of upwards of 160 tons of coal.

The following photo is looking east along London Wall. St. Olave’s churchyard is behind the greenery to the right, and Silver Street once ran into London Wall at this point, emerging from under the building to the right of the arch seen in the photo:

With a bit of changing the perspective of the photo of the Coopers’ Arms, I think I can get the positioning right, superimposed on the photo of the area today:

Not sure whether this will work, or appear in emails, but an animated GIF of the above photo:

Monkwell Street is the street running off to the left of the Coopers’ Arms, which is on the corner with Silver Street running off to the right. It does not follow the route of today’s London Wall, but heads to the right / south of the street, and disappears under the building on the right of the arch over London Wall.

St. Olave’s churchyard is the only part of an old streetscape that dates back to at least the 13th century, to remain. Silver Street and Monkwell Street were lost during redevelopment, and I doubt those who lived, worked, or simply walked along Silver Street could have imagined what the area would look like in the future – a recurring theme across the ever changing city.

I have written a number of posts about this area, and I find it fascinating to continue exploring to gain a fuller understanding of the place.

You may be interested in the following posts which also cover the area:

Monkwell Street, Barbican – Discovering A Lost Street

William Shakespeare and the Mountjoy Family, one of the plaques looked at in this post

London Wall – A Location Shifting Historic Street

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Covent Garden, Sunday Afternoon, 9th of August 1953

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The majority of my father’s photos were not dated. It is possible to work out the year that the photo was taken by looking at the notes that went with the negatives, and where an individual photo has been printed and dated from a film of 36 photos. Three photos I can date accurately are of Covent Garden, on Sunday the 9th of August, 1953:

I suspect these photos were possibly taken as competition entries at the St. Brides Institute Photographic Society, as my father was a member and did win a couple of their competitions. They seem to be more composed, and to focus on specific details rather than general photos of places.

The photos were taken around the northern side of the market building, and show piles of produce in sacks and boxes:

Along with the barrows used by market workers to move stock around:

Although my father had recorded that these photos were of Covent Garden market, I was rather unsure of the location.

In the background of the first photo the corner of a building with two street name signs can be seen.

The following extract shows the two street signs as a clip from the TIF 55MB image straight out of the scanner, so about the best I can get, given that this is from 72 year old film:

Even with the grainy image, it is possible to see the names James Street on the left and Covent Garden on the right, so I can locate the photo as being on the northern side of the market building.

In the following map, the building corner with the two street name signs is at the end of the red arrow, and the approximate location from where the photo was taken, is shown by the red circle (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The street names seemed to provide firm proof of the location of the photo, however one aspect of the 1953 photo still concerned me. Return to the photo at the top of the post, and the pillar is in sunlight, with the shade of a lamp being cast on the pillar. If the pillar was on the north-western side of the market (you can see the orientation of the market building in the above map), could it really have been in direct sunlight, sufficient for a distinct shadow to form on the pillar?

To resolve this, I used the Shademap App.

This application displays a street map, and allows you to adjust the date and time, and the map displays how the area in shadow changes.

Using Shademap, it looked as is the photo was taken just after 4pm. At this time, the angle of the shadow cast by the sun looks as if it would cast a shadow of an overhead lamp on the pillar, with the pillar and area where the boxes and sacks are located, in sunlight.

Shademap also shows that the corner building with the street name signs would be in slight shade, which seems to agree with the photo.

So if the photo was taken just after 4pm on Sunday the 9th of August, 1953, you may well be wondering why I am featuring it for the post on the 2nd of March. It is down to my lack of organisation with posts, and featuring posts in the order of scanning the photos and an opportunity to visit the site.

To find the location of the photo, I walked to the north-western side of the Covent Garden market building. This is the view along the open space between the market on the right and the surrounding buildings on the left. You can see the pillars which line the edge of the market, one of which featured in my father’s photo:

It is difficult to be sure exactly which pillar was in the photo. The first possibility is shown in the following photo:

Two street name signs can still be seen on the corner of the building opposite, however the building is not the same as the one in the 1953 photo. The building we see today is part of the late 1990s redevelopment of the large plot, part occupied by the Royal Opera House. The street running off to the left is James Street.

I moved to the next gap between two pillars to take the following photo, which could also include the pillar in the original photo. This photo shows one of the ornamental barrows around the market which are reproductions for decoration, rather than the original barrows shown in my father’s photo:

The shadow on the pillar in the 1953 photo was presumably a lamp, and today there are still lamps lining the edge of the building above the pillars, although comparing with the 1953 shadow, they do not appear to be the same:

I find it fascinating to explore some of the details within these old photos. The following is an extract from the second of the 1953 photos:

Firstly, the sacks have the numbers 1952 on them, which I assume is a year, which would have been the year before the photo was taken. Possibly the year that the sacks were made?

Both the sacks and the boxes to the right have the name W. Medlock, which seems to have been a company that operated at Covent Garden for many years.

The first reference I found to W. Medlock was in the Bedfordshire Times and Independent on the 5th of September, 1871, in an article about the Sandy Flower and Horticultural Show.

In the list of those who were judges of flower and agricultural exhibits, Mr. W. Medlock is a judge for the Market Garden produce, and he is listed as Mr. W. Medlock, Covent Garden.

As well as being a judge, W. Medlock also exhibited produce at the Sandy show. In the 1903 show, within the category for Market Gardeners, Medlock won a special prize for a “bushel of white or red Hebron potatoes”.

W. Medlock Ltd, were a firm of potato merchants, which explains the shape of the contents of the sacks in the above photo. There are many references to them in and around Sandy, Bedfordshire, which has long been an agricultural area, and there are still growers and merchants of potatoes listed in the area.

In the 19th century, Sandy was a small market town and in the 1924 revision of the Ordnance Survey map, much of the land surrounding the town is marked as being allotments, so this was an area of market gardens.

What must have helped with linking Sandy with Covent Garden was that the town was not far from the original A1 north road, and in 1850 Sandy railway station was built, providing a rail route to London, which must have been the main method for transporting W. Medlock’s potatoes from the town to Covent Garden.

Further confirmation that W. Medlock was a potato merchant was from a very condescending article in the Daily Herald on the 16th of June, 1931:

“POTATOES GET THE SACK – CROSSED OFF MENU BY SLIMMING GIRLS. Potato sales are dropping alarmingly. The homely ‘spud’ is being despised and rejected, and women are responsible.

Through the eyes of the potato, women see the great modern bogey, Fat, and they are as much afraid of the potato as they would have once have been of a mouse.

‘Our sales have dropped by a third in the past three years’ said the manager of Messrs. W. Medlock Ltd. wholesale potato merchants of Covent Garden, to a Daily Herald representative yesterday.

Restaurants are serving far fewer potatoes than they used to because women will not eat them. Even the women who are not definitely on a slimming diet have certain taboos, and the first of them is potatoes.

‘Women are behaving very foolishly about dieting, and this potato ban is one example of their folly’ a doctor said. They are doing harm by cutting out potatoes unless they substitute something equally starchy – which they don’t.

Potatoes are good food, and it is time women learned sense about them.”

However, the only person acting foolishly was the Daily Herald reporter, as soon after the above article, the paper had to print the following apology:

“POTATO FIRM’S SALES – In our issue of June 16 we stated that the sales of Messrs. W. Medlock Ltd. wholesale potato merchants of Covent Garden ‘have dropped by a third in the past three year’.

Messrs. Medlock inform us that this is not correct. Their sales have not diminished in any way, but on the contrary, are regularly and steadily increasing.

We gladly give publicity to this fact and offer our apologies to Messrs. W. Medlock Ltd. for any annoyance the misstatement may have caused them.”

Which just goes to show that back in 1931, stories in papers about diets were just as reliable as they are today.

The name of another Covent Garden merchant, and which also demonstrates a link with the agricultural areas surrounding London, can be found by looking at one of the other 1953 photos, where boxes with the name W.J. Soper can be seen:

W.J. Soper were agricultural merchants who seem to have brought in produce from Norfolk. They were regularly mentioned in lists of merchants in Norfolk newspapers, such as the Lynn News and Advertiser, based in King’s Lynn, to the north-west of Norfolk, just south of the Wash.

A typical mention from the 14th of March, 1958 reads:

“Large quantities of King Edward and Majestic Ware potatoes, Parsnips, Red Beet, and Cabbage – W.J. Soper, Ltd. Covent Garden, Spitalfields, Borough Market, Harlow. Cheques daily or weekly as required – Local rep. W. Edwards, Tel Wisbech 1769.”

Soper’s representative was based in Wiusbech, which is a short distance to the south-west of King’s Lynn. The advert tells us a bit about how Covent Garden market operated.

Firstly, along with W. Medlock, companies such as W.J. Soper, trading at Covent Garden were buying in produce from across the agricultural lands of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, and with the location of towns such as Wisbech, this probably included Lincolnshire.

The expansion of the rail network across these counties from the 1850s must have helped considerably with the transport of agricultural produce to help feed the ever growing population of London.

W.J. Soper’s newspaper listing also mentions other London markets at Spitalfields, and Borough Market, so many companies were probably not just operating at Covent Garden, but were bringing in produce to be sold across London. The mention of Harlow is rather strange, unless they also served a market in one of the first post-war new towns being built in London’s orbit.

One other point about the photos – they were taken on a Sunday afternoon, and there is lots of agricultral produce piled up outside the main market buildings.

The market must have been closed at that time, and unfortunately the photos do not show if there was anyone who worked at the market in the surrounding area. Was there any form of security to protect these sacks and boxes from theft? If not it seems remarkable that so much could be left around the market until it opened early on Monday morning.

There is a fascinating film of Covent Garden fruit, flower and vegetable markets in operation from 1957, just four years after my father’s photo. The film starts at a farm in Sussex where produce is being loaded onto a lorry for a late night drive into London so the produce can be sold at Covent Garden. The film can be watched here:

The film mentions potatoes from Norfolk, but also demonstrates the wide geographic area that supplied produce to be sold in the market, as well as the considerable distances that produce sold at the market were transported to, so as well as being a market to supply London, Covent Garden was also supplying many businesses across the country.

The film also implies that the market was almost a 24 hour operation, with produce arriving at all times, and being sold during a set number of hours. Perhaps this explains why the sacks and boxes in my father’s photo appear to have been left unattended on a Sunday afternoon. They may have just arrived, or were waiting to be moved.

I always find it rather poignant watching these old films, as those shown working across the market had no idea of just how much the market would change in the coming decades, with Covent Garden closing as a market and relocating to Nine Elms less than twenty years after the above film.

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Euston Station and HS2 – A 2025 Update

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Eight years ago, I started an annual post about the works around Euston Station for HS2. That first post was about St. James Gardens, which I photographed just before closure, as the area was part of the route for HS2 rail tracks and the station infrastructure.

Back in 2017, I thought it would be interesting to walk the same route each year, and watch as the new station develops, to see how such a major London infrastructure build transforms a relatively small area, and what a brand new Euston station would look like – a new station that was desperately needed.

Little did I know at the time, that eight years later there would still be very little of any new infrastructure to see (a full list of all the posts is at the end of today’s post).

Although this was intended to be an annual post, I did not do one in 2024, as there was virtually no change to see, and sadly, in early 2025, this is still the situation, but if anything, keeping up a regular almost annual post does highlight the issues around a construction project such as HS2, and how shockingly bad as a country, we have become at deciding on, planning, financing and building this type of large infrastructure project.

So, for 2025, prepare to be underwhelmed !!

I started at Euston Station – a station that is in desperate need of a rebuild. The current station buildings opened in 1968, and my first experience with Euston was in the late 1970s when taking the train to the BT apprentice training centre at Bletchley. Then, it seemed a very modern and efficient station when compared to the decaying Victorian stations of the major termini around London.

Today, the majority of those Victorian Stations have been preserved and really well redeveloped, whilst the late 1960s Euston station has become over crowded, inefficient, rather strange walking routes to connect between over and underground transport, and is in desperate need of a rebuild.

However, the major change across the whole walk I would take in 2025, was not as a result of HS2, rather the change of the horrendous, over-bright advertising screen that took over the original platform and train information boards, back to the function it should be doing – indicating platform and train details:

Not much can be seen of the HS2 works from the station, but walk up to the upper level, and by the stairs in the south-west corner of the station, we can look over the area between the station, Melton Street on the right, and the old taxi rank to the south. This should be part of the new station, but for now, and the last few years, it is just a hole in the ground:

Walking out of the station, across the open plaza, under the office blocks towards the south-east, and the Doric Arch pub is still open:

And this area is still busy with buses:

On the eastern side of the station there is a new taxi rank, with multi-coloured shelters, which appear to reflect a new colour scheme for Euston signs, which at the moment only appear in small parts of the area being redeveloped:

From Euston Road there is very little to be seen of any HS2 works. The Grade II listed lodges, which are the only survivors of the 1870 build of the original Euston station, and which stand either side of the road used by buses to access the bus station, still face onto Euston Road:

In the above photo, there are two lamp posts, one on either side of the entrance to the Euston bus station. They are of a really interesting design. They are not listed in the Historic England database, and following a brief search, I cannot find any information about them.

The design at the top includes a wreath, and what looks to be possibly a Roman helmet:

Crossing the road between the two lodges, and we can see the 1921. Grade II* listed war memorial, designed by Reginald Wynn Owen, with the bus station to the right, and the late 1970s low rise office block that was built between the station and Euston Road as part of a development of low and high rise office blocks in the late 1970s:

And when we get to the junction of Euston Road and Melton Street, we can look along what is left of Melton Street, with the hoardings that surround the HS2 works blocking the road, with just a pedestrian walkway to the left:

And walking through what was Melton Street, we get into an area of walkways running between hoardings that block off views of what should be construction sites:

And which have hardly changed for the last few years:

Until we get to the south-west corner access to the station:

We finally get to see some of the working area for the new station:

At the corner of where Drummond Street once met Melton Street is the original Euston station of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (I wrote about a visit to the station and tunnels in this post):

This is the walkway that follows the route of what was Drummond Street, where it led up to the junction with Melton Street and Cardington Street. Again, this has not changed for the last few years, and is the access route to the station from the streets to the west of the station:

There are very few places where you can look through the hoardings and see any of the construction site. There is one in the above photo, looking north to the area that at some point will see the new HS2 tracks arrive at the new part of Euston Station for HS2:

The old St. James Gardens and burial grounds were in the area roughly where the blue containers are in the above photo, including the area slightly in front, to the rear, and to the left.

For a mid-week view of a construction site, there is very little going on.

To the west of the construction site, several streets have been truncated – Drummond Street, Euston Street and Stephenson Way. Cobourg Street which ran north – south across these streets is today mainly a walkway, with hoarding lining the eastern side of the street, towards the station.

The following photo is at the end of Euston Street, looking north along what was Cobourg Street:

The HS2 website has a Media section which includes photos of the construction site. The following image shows what is behind the hoardings in the above photo:

Image source: https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/resources/aerial-view-of-hs2-s-london-euston-station-works-january-2023-7-2

At the junction of what was Cobourg Street and Starcross Street is the Exmouth Arms – still open:

And along Starcross Street is Camden Council’s Euston Skills Centre, set-up to provide a wide range of training and skills for trades in the construction industry:

If I remember rightly, when the Skills Centre was first planned, HS2 played a large part due to the expected demand for a considerable number of trained construction workers, however reading through the brochure for the skills centre (downloadable here), there is no mention of HS2, presumably due to the lack of any significant construction work along the route of the new railway through Camden and the build of a new station.

The public open space in front of the Skills Centre includes a few relics from the wider area, and in the following photo are four cast iron pillars which were salvaged from the King’s Cross development:

The old Maria Fidelis Catholic School, now part of the Skills Centre:

I have now reached Hampstead Road, and the former Saint Pancras Female Orphanage building, later an annex of the London Temperance Hospital and now an NHS facility, is still standing on the edge of the construction site:

Whilst there are hoardings lining the side of the construction site along Hampstead Road, there is a small open space which has taken a number of forms over the years.

This is the view of the space in 2025:

The structure in the above photo is called “Reflect” and was designed and built by 18 young people from Euston as part of an HS2 programme.

The structure serves as a stage for performance, play, gatherings and shelter. At the top of the structure are mirrors arranged at different angles to reflect the sun and provide alternative views of the open space.

View from the base of “Reflect”:

Within this open space there are a number of raised planters, some of wood, others of concrete.

Some of the planters have some very brief information cards, for example in the following, the tree is a Silver Birch, a native of the Himalayas, and one of the orange cards informs that it is “used for sweeping leaves off patios and for flying”.

The white card at the end informs “Limestone. Calcium Carbonate. Native to Lincolnshire among many other places in the UK”. It all seems rather hurriedly done:

Further along Hampstead Road, and this is the junction with what was Cardington Street – now an access road to the overall construction site:

There are plenty of works going on along Hampstead Road. These works, according to one of the HS2 Euston updates is to “complete ‘no regrets’ enabling works across the HS2 site and other activities to make the site safe while the main construction work is paused“:

I love the term “no regrets” for work that presumably will need to be done whatever the outcome, and is why there is relatively little going on around Euston as the majority of works have been paused, following the Government’s announcement in 2023 about changes to HS2 funding and programme of works.

At present, construction work is moving ahead on the route between Old Oak Common in London, and Birmingham.

The section between Old Oak Common and Euston Station is on pause whilst attempts are made to secure funding from the private sector to help with completion of this final leg of the route into central London, and a new station.

As far as I know, there is no final design for a new station to terminate the HS2 tracks, and no decision on how far the existing Euston station will be rebuilt and integrated with a new station for HS2.

Work preparing for the Euston Tunnel, part of the route between Old Oak Common and Euston seems to be going ahead, as the HS2 Media documents include images of the tunnel boring machines being prepared, for example, this is “Euston TBM Madeleine pushed into launch tunnel preparing to begin constructing the Euston Tunnel”:

Image source: https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/resources/rail-minister-and-new-ceo-at-old-oak-common-station-box-to-see-the-two-tbms-preparing-to-build-hs2-to-euston-7

However, this may be down to contractual commitments, and the tunnel boring machines for the Euston Tunnel will have been ordered long before the 2023 hold on the route between Old Oak Common and Euston, and what do you do with a tunnel boring machine that you have ordered, when it arrives on site?

HS2’s January 2025 Construction Update has a slide with all the tunnels and the progress of their tunnel boring machines.

Many of the tunnels are complete, and tunnels where construction is still underway are listed as being from 29% to 62% complete.

The two Euston tunnels are both listed as 0% complete, with their status as “Preparing for launch”.

Access into the works along the western edge of Hampstead Road:

More of the ‘no regrets’ enabling works” being completed along Hampstead Road:

Further along Hampstead Road, I turned west into Mornington Crescent, then to Clarkson Row, where there is a high wall running between the street and the railway, however it is just possible to lift the camera above the wall to take some random photos to show the construction works on the opposite side of the working rail tracks. This shows the route of the new HS2 tracks into Euston, parallel to the existing:

Looking further to the west:

Both views look very similar to 2023.

And with that, I am at the end of my 2025 walk around the HS2 Euston construction site, which, as I stated at the start of the post is rather underwhelming, with little having changed since my 2023 walk.

For years, HS2 has been a rather polarising, marmite project – you either love it or you hate it.

It is costing a vast sum of money, much of which has been wasted, for example with the ongoing changes and cancellations to parts of the route, the delays to the final stretch into Euston – which although major works have been delayed, just keeping the site secure and open is costing money, as are the activities presumably going on behind the scenes to try and secure funding for the Euston route.

Personally, I am in favour of HS2, although I have always thought that the name is wrong. Shaving minutes of a journey to Birmingham in no way justifies the expense. High speed only becomes relevant if the route is extended to the far north of the country and into Scotland.

Where HS2 will be very positive is by the provision of additional rail capacity, and taking trains off the existing tracks allowing additional local services to be implemented, however whether you support HS2 or not, it is a horrendous example of the country’s inability to plan, make a decision on, fund and build a major infrastructure project, and to be consistent during a long construction phase.

Will it look the same during a 2026 walk – I suspect it will, and I will bore you with that in a post next year.

The opportunities of new rail routes has recently been shown by a change in the agreement to operate HS1, the route that connects St. Pancras with the Channel Tunnel, which fully opened in 2007.

Under the changes just agreed, HS1 has been renamed London St Pancras Highspeed, and whilst up to now Eurostar has had an effective monopoly on the use of the route, it has left HS1 significantly under utilised, but now the route will open up to other operators, with the potential for a wider range of destinations across Europe.

And just imagine if HS1 was connected to HS2, so that high speed trains from Scotland and the north of England could have direct connectivity with destinations across Europe (which was once one of the selling points for the whole concept of HS2).

In the meantime, I will leave you with the concept designs from 2022, showing what should have been under construction at Euston. The station exterior:

Image source: https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/resources/hs2-euston-station-concept-design-exterior

The station interior:

Image source: https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/resources/ilokw-nye96-e9kz8-kj7l6-ro892

And if you would like to read about the last 8 years of progress (or lack of) around Euston, my previous posts are here (this will be an ever growing list over the years to come, until the opening of the station, which I hope to see at some point):

My first post was back in 2017 and covered St James Gardens, just before they were closed for excavation.

My second post in 2018 walked around the streets to the west of the station, as buildings began to close, and the extent of the works could be seen.

I then went back in 2019 as demolition started.

In 2020, demolition was well underway and St James Gardens had disappeared, and the associated archaeological excavation had finished

And in June 2021 I went back for another walk around the edge of the construction site.

A 2022 walk around the site is here.

And my last walk around the site was in 2023, which is here.

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Patrick Colquhoun and the Thames River Police

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In 1949, my father photographed the patrol boats of the Thames River Police, moored in the river next to the floating police station, which was located where the RNLI Lifeboat Station is today, next to Waterloo Bridge, which is the bridge seen in the background:

The boats of the river police, or to give them the correct name of today’s force, the Marine Policing Unit, have changed somewhat in the intervening 76 years:

The founding of the Thames River Police as a professional force goes back to the year 1800. The rapidly growing trade based along the river, the storage of valuable goods in warehouses and boats on the river and the resultant dramatic increase in theft resulted in an urgent need for a force that could protect commercial property.

Whilst a police force for the river had been formed in 1798, it lacked the supporting legislation, along with a more professional approach to policing, which the Port of London required.

One man, Patrick Colquhoun was instrumental in demonstrating the remarkable volume of theft, the commercial impact that this had, both on owners and the loss of tax revenue, and putting forward an argument for legislation to support a professional river police, and in 1800, he published a major work of some 676 pages with the title of “A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames”:

It is a remarkable read, and before looking at the contents of the book, some back ground into the life of Patrick Colquhoun.

He was born in March 1745 and died at his house, 21 James Street, Buckingham Gate, in April 1820.

To try and find a detailed account of his life, I searched newspapers of the time to see if there was an obituary, however every paper published just a brief couple of lines, similar to the following from the New Times of London on the 3rd of May, 1820:

“On the 25th, at his house, No. 21 James-street, Buckingham-gate, Patrick Colquhoun, Esq. LL.D. aged 76. Author of the Treatises of the Police of the Metropolis and the River Thames, and of the Wealth, Power and Resources of the British Empire.”

I eventually found a very comprehensive story of his life in the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette on the 26th of September, 1820:

“We lately intimated the death of our Countryman Patrick Colquhoun, and we should not have again referred to this painful subject had we not felt that his was no ordinary merit, and that it was in some measure our duty to bestow upon his memory our tribute of respect for the patriotism of his public life.

Mr Colquhoun was descended from an ancient family settled in Dumbartonshire for many centuries. A younger son, he proceeded to Virginia, and there, although in the wilds of America, having access to a valuable library, he, by his own industry, completed his education. Returning to Scotland, he established himself in Glasgow. For three successive years he was elected Lord Provost of that City.

He regulated and improved the Forth and Clyde Navigation, so beneficial to the internal commerce of the Island.

He removed to London, and was nominated a Police Magistrate, but his was not a disposition to confine itself to the routine of mere official studies; or, seeing evils and imperfections in a system, to object, find fault with them, and leave them as they were. He felt it his duty to suggest remedies, and, as far as the means were afforded him, practically to prove the utility of his suggestions; with this feeling, he published ‘The Police of the Metropolis’ and soon after his assistance was solicited by the Duke of Portland to systematise and superintend the marine police of the River Thames.

Mr. Secretary Dundas estimated the increase to the Revenue from the system established at £30,000 annually on sugar alone, by the prevention of depredations on that article, and so expressed it in his speech on introducing the Thames Police Bill into the House.”

Patrick Colquhoun in 1818:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

There is more to the obituary, which I will come onto later in the post, however the above couple of paragraphs bring us to Colquhoun’s book.

He had already written about the Police of the Metropolis, and his next book, Police of the Thames, focuses on the problem of theft across the Port of London, policing of the river, quays and warehouses, and the Acts of Parliament, laws and penalties needed to address what was a significant and growing problem at the end of the 18th century.

Patrick Colquhoun was into detail. The book is full of the history of the Port of London, how it had arrived as one of the major global trading centres by the end of the 18th century, how the port operated, trade through the port, those who work across the port etc. and Colquhoun used plenty of data and statistics to support his proposed approach.

His book really provides a very in depth understanding of the Port of London at the end of the 18th century, and for today’s post, I will look at the first couple of chapters which provide some background to the operation of the port, and the different methods of theft of goods whilst in boats on the rivers, whilst being transferred, and when stored in warehouses.

Indeed, at every part of the chain from when a ship arrived at the Port, to the time when goods where shipped to their final destination, there was a risk of theft.

At the end of the 18th century, the City of London had already long been a trading port, for as well as being a major crossing between the north and south banks of the Thames, the city’s role as a trading port was key to London’s existence, importance and growth.

It was not only English merchants though who were responsible foe trade. Some of the first records of trade through the city, show that in 1561, there were no Englishmen who had a sole occupation as an importer and exporter. The 327 people who were recorded as being merchants, consisted of:

In the 16th century, England was somewhat behind other European countries, such as the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal (for example, in my post a couple of weeks ago on William Adams, when he arrived in Japan in 1600, the Portuguese and Spanish had already established trading links, and the Dutch were also trading in the region).

Much of the early trading through the City was driven by trading companies, and merchant adventurers, who raised the funds needed to buy or build ships, raise crews and trade across the world, and the 16th century saw a growing number of these companies:

Hamburg Company – one of the earliest. Granted a charter by Henry IV in 1406, and renewed through to 1661
The Russia Company – Charter granted by Queen Mary in 1555
The Eastland, or North-Sea Company – Charter granted by Elizabeth I in 1579
The Turkey Company – Charter granted by Elizabeth I in 1581
The East-India Company – Charter granted by Elizabeth I in 1599
The American Company – Charter granted by Charles II in 1663
The Hudsons-Bay Company – Charter granted by Charles II in 1681

The impact on trade by companies such as the East-India and Hudson’s Bay can be seen in how trade through the Port of London was switching between Foreign and British owned ships. The following table shows the change between 1702 and 1751:

It was not just trade with foreign countries that was creating the rapid rise in the volume of trade through the Port of London, there was also a considerable amount of coastal trade, with ships trading between London and the various ports around the coast of the country.

The following table is one of very many from the book and shows the type of detailed information on the Port of London used by Colquhoun. The table shows the Coasting Trade between the Port of London and the ports across England and Wales in 1796:

The following table shows the increase in foreign trade throughout the 18th century, and the mix between British and Foreign ships. The table shows that foreign shipping expanded considerably during the later half of the century compared to the first half:

All these ships transported a vast array of valuable goods, and the book includes a large, fold out table detailing “Commerce and Shipping of the River Thames…..applicable to the year ending the 5th January 1798, with the true Valuation of the Merchandise Imported and Exported from and to Parts beyond Seas”. It was difficult to photograph this table due to the delicacy of this 225 year old book, and really not wanting to damage my copy. The following is my best attempt, click on the image for an enlarged version:

This was a colossal volume and variety of goods that at some point were on a ship in the Port of London, transferred between ship and quay, and stored in w warehouse.

I used the Bank of England inflation calculator to see what the equivalent value would be today, and the £30,957,421 of Imports would today be worth £3,375,071,706, with the £29,640,568 of exports being worth £3,231,504,408.

A number of caveats need to apply to these figures, for example the accuracy of inflation figures going back over 200 years, purchasing power, etc. but they do give an idea of value, and in today’s money, in 1798, £6,606,576,114 was being imported and exported through the Port of London

All these figures on trade in the Port of London were included in Colquhoun’s book to indicate the scale of the problem, as this vast array of valuable goods offered a considerable opportunity for theft, both by “professional” thieves, as well as organised and petty pilfering from those who worked across the Port of London.

Patrick Colquhoun believed that theft was endemic.

He believed that theft became a significant problem after the start of the 18th century, and attributes this to a decree of religious and moral decay, described in the following paragraphs:

“The progress of evil; propensities was slow, while a sense of Religion and Morality operated in a greater degree than at present; upon the minds of the lower orders of people. In the moral, as in the physical World. The change of habit is gradual, and often imperceptible. In contemplating the magnitude of the abuses which are to be developed in this Work, the mind is naturally led to an inquiry into the causes which have produced a system of matured delinquency; which is perhaps, unparalleled in the criminal history of any other country.

It is not unlikely, that the disposition to pillage Commercial Property while afloat, derived its origins in no considerable degree, from the habit of Smuggling, which has prevailed ever since Revenues were collected.”

Colquhoun treated the propensity for theft as a disease, which contaminated the minds of those working on the river. Those infected were seduced by motives of avarice, habits of pillage, and an impunity that came with the lack of appropriate laws, and the force to carry them out.

In describing how the disease spread, he states that: “New Converts to the System of Iniquity were rapidly made. The mass of Labourers on the River became gradually contaminated. A similar class upon the Quays, and in the Warehouses, caught the infection, and the evil expanded as Commerce increased.”

Colquhoun’s book provides very many detailed descriptions of daily life in the Port of London, and of those involved in the very many types of illegal activity in the port. These descriptions help us to understand what it was like in the Port, and the dangers faced by those transporting goods.

Colquhoun identified a number of “species of Depredation”, or “Classes” of those involved in theft across the Port of London, and I have summarised his descriptions of these as follows:

River Piracy – This was where organised gangs would attack a ship or lighter, and would take almost everything on board. Methods included cutting the anchor ropes or chains and letting the ship drift to a more suitable part of the river where it could be stripped, not just of cargo, but also of rigging, ropes, anchors, cables, anything that could be moved and had a value.
Night Plunderers – These were “chiefly composed of gangs of the most dissolute Watermen, who prefer idleness to labour”. Night plunders would look for, of be informed of, unattended lighters on the river, and would steal anything that was accessible and portable from the lighter. They would then take their plunder to a place agreed with a Receiver (another of the many criminal roles across the Port). Night plunders would often steal from the same place over a period of time, and Colquhoun gives an example of five boat loads of Hemp being stolen from a lighter over the course of a few weeks, and conveyed along the river, through London Bridge to Ranelaigh Creek where the stolen Hemp was sold.
Night Plunderers. denominated Light-Horsemen – Light-Horsemen were a type of Night Plunderer that focused on the West India Trade. Their pillage was “generally extensive and valuable”. They were organised, with Receivers on both sides of the river who were the chief leaders of individual gangs, The gangs of Light-Horsemen consisted of one or more Receivers, Coopers, Watermen and Lumpers, and they would board a boat fully prepared with Iron-crows, Adzes and the tools needed to open casks and shovels to take out Sugar. The Watermen procured as many boats as were needed, the Lumpers unstowed the casks in the hold and the Coopers took of the heads of the casks, and all hands assisted with filling bags and loading into their boats.
Heavy-Horsemen or Day Plunderer – These criminals would pilfer whatever they could from a ship or lighter, often while working on the transfer of cargo. They would often use an undergarment, called a “Jemmy, with pockets before and behind; also with long narrow bags or pouches, which, when filled were lashed to their legs and thighs, and concealed under wide trousers”. They would carry off vast amounts of Sugars, Coffee, Cocoa, Ginger, and Colquhoun quotes one instance where s single gang stole enough sugar, that, despite being sold for half of its actual value, made them £397.
Journeymen Coopers – These workers were employed to repair casks and packages, but in reality many used this work to thieve. For example, when leaving ships in the evening after a day of proper work, they would carry off Sugar, Coffee, and any other articles or goods that were easy to conceal and carry.
Watermen – For theft across the river, a boat would be needed, and unscrupulous Watermen would often provide the boats needed, and take those intent on stealing to their targets on the river. They would keep watch, and afterwards take the gangs and their stolen goods back to shore, and they would receive a payment for their services. Colquhoun provides an example of how a Waterman would work – “A Ship-Master who had been a stranger in the river, finding himself beset by a gang of audacious Lumpers, who insisted on carrying away Plunder in spite of all his exertions to prevent it, while he was engaged on deck in searching these miscreants, a barrel of Sugar which stood in his Cabin was in the course of a few minutes, emptied and removed in bags through the cabin windows, under which a Waterman with his boat lay to receive it, and got clear off without discovery, to the surprise of the Captain when he returned to his cabin.”
Mud-Larks – Where a vessel close to shore was being looted, the Mud-Lark would prowl about in the mud, under the Bow and would receive bags from those on board the vessel, and would carry the bags to shore. Mud-Larks would also prowl around Dock-Gates on the pretext of looking for nails, where their principal object was to receive sheets of Copper and bags of Nails which were thrown to them by dock labourers.
Rat-Catchers – Ships would often be infested with rats, so a Rat-Catcher would provide a valuable service, however many rat-catchers used their work to steal from ships. Rat-Catchers would often work at night to set traps, and at the same time take some of the cargo. They would also revisit the ship whenever they wanted on the pretext of checking and resetting the traps, but again used these opportunities to steal. Rat-catchers were also known to transfer live rats between ships in order to get more business, and to use the opportunity to steal from other ships.
Game-Lightermen – This class of criminal consisted of Lightermen who would steal from the lighters on which they worked. Lighters were used to transfer cargo between ship and land, and between ships, so for a period of time the cargo carried was under the control of one or more Lightermen, who would use the opportunity to take a proportion of the cargo being transferred. Much of this stolen cargo was transferred to a small boat, or skiff, and Colquhoun provides an example of a seizure of a Skiff loaded with a bag of Coffee and 109lb of Sugar whilst in the act of being stolen from a Lighter.
Scuffle-Hunters – These are described by Colquhoun as “literally the lowest class of the community, who are vulgarly denominated the Tag-Rag and Bobtail”. Scuffle-Hunters would hang around the places where goods are being landed on the Quays, and offer assistance as a porter. They would wear long aprons, which allowed them to conceal any goods that they could take, whilst apparently helping the loading or unloading of a ship.
The Warehouses – Whilst Colquhourn does not list a specific name for those who stole from warehouses, he does include warehouses in the list as a place from where individuals or gangs would steal. This included those who specifically entered a warehouse at anytime, day or night, with the intention to steal, as well as those who worked in a warehouse and used the opportunity to pilfer goods.

Based on the above descriptions, it seems amazing that any of the goods traded through the Port of London survived the process, and did not end up in the hands of a Receiver, however even if 5% of traded goods ended up as being stolen, this would still be a value of just over £3 Million in 1798 prices, being stolen every year.

The descriptions help us to understand what life was like on the river, and along the Quays where goods were being loaded and unloaded. It was a place where ship and cargo owners must have been forever on their guard, where boats with a gang of men passing along the river would have been viewed with suspicion by those on ships, and where many of the shops of London sold stolen goods.

As an example of how stolen goods were traded on, Colquhoun gives an example of Thames Street.

Today Thames Street (now Upper and Lower Thames Street) is a much widened street with dual carriageways taking traffic between the eastern and western sides of the City.

In the late 18th century, Thames Street ran along the back of the warehouses and quays that lined the river, and as with most of London at the time, there were many Pubs both along Thames Street and in the surrounding streets.

It was in these Pubs that stolen goods were sold. Journeymen Coopers would take their Boards of Sugar, and small Grocers would purchase this sugar with fictious Bills of Parcels used to cover the transfer of stolen property from the Pubs to their shops and houses.

Print from 1801, the year after Colquhoun’s book was published, showing the Thames, busy with shipping:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

There is too much in Colquhourn’s book to cover in a single post, so I will explore the Port of London and Policing the Port in more detail in the coming months, but for now I return to the obituary published a few months after his death, to provide a summary of his other achievements:

He established a society at Lloyd’s, with some of the most respectable merchants, to assist the poor and the needy by the distribution of soup, potatoes, herrings etc.
In 1806, he proposed the establishment of Savings Banks “to lead the poor by gentle and practicable means into the way of bettering themselves”
He was “so highly esteemed in the dominions of His Majesty, as on the Continent of Europe, that the colonies of St. Vincent, Nevis, Dominica and the Virgin Islands, as also the Free Hanseatic Republics of Lubec, Bremen and Hamburg, nominated him their Representative and Consul General”
As well as his two books on policing, he also published a book on the “Power, Wealth, and Resources, of the British Empire”, along with other publications on Criminal Justice, Political Economy, and on Commerce and Manufacture of Great Britain
He was one of the first five who met and formed the Royal Institution (this was the meeting on the 7 March 1799 at the Soho Square house of Joseph Banks. I can not immediately find any confirmation of this)
He was a Member of the Society for bettering the condition of the Poor
The University of Glasgow conferred the distinction of Doctor of Law, and he was granted the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh

The obituary ended with a summary that he had “a mind fertile in conception, kind and benevolent in disposition, and bold and persevering in execution; ever ready to give his advice and assistance when his means enabled him to do so, and that his long and laborious life was honourable to himself and useful to his Country”.

There were some criticisms of his approach, that he was too much on the side of Commerce and Capitalism. His view on the poor also seems to have followed the 19th century view of the “deserving poor”, as Colquhoun in some of his publications appears to divide the poor into those who deserve help, and the criminal poor, who only deserve the full force of the law, and this can be seen earlier in the post with his use of “species of Depredation”, or “Classes”.

His book on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames does provide us with a very comprehensive view of the Port of London, at the end of the 18th century, a time when the London Docks were about to enter a period of rapid expansion.

I will explore this brief period of London’s history in more detail, using Colquhoun’s book in future posts.

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Lower Robert Street, Jenny’s Hole and the Tragic Death of a Child.

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The area between the Strand and the Embankment is a fascinating place to explore. There are plenty of small streets and alleys, many running between the Strand and Embankment, others linking between many of these streets. Those that run down to the Embankment can be (for central London) relatively steep, with a number having steps up to the Strand – a reminder of how this area was once the steep bank between the foreshore of the Thames, and the high ground along which the Strand became part of a well travelled route linking the City of London and Westminster.

The area was also once the home of the great London homes of the rich and titled, estates such as Arundel House, York House, Essex House and Northumberland House.

As with most of London, continuous redevelopment has transformed the streets and buildings, perhaps the most significant being the construction of the Embankment and Embankment Gardens which now provide an expanse of flat land between what was the boundary between land and river, and the Thames of today.

The descent from the Strand down to the river needed some creative construction techniques for many of the large estates and buildings, and one of these was the late 18th century Adelphi development by Robert Adam.

Located where the 1930s Adelphi now stands, Roberts Adam’s original Adelphi was a development of streets and houses on a level platform to bring the estate up to, as close as possible, a level with the Strand.

To level up the Adelphi development, it was built on a complex of arches that created an area below the houses that was intended to be rented out for storage, stabling, warehouses for the wharf between the Adelphi and the river, etc.

There is almost nothing left of this dark and damp subterranean area following the development of the existing Adelphi building, however the following mid 19th century print by John Wykeham Archer gives an impression of what these vaults were like:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

One place we can get feel for what it was like to walk down into the vaults under the Adelphi, is in the street York Buildings, where towards the upper part of the street, there is an entrance under a 20th century building, into Lower Robert Street:

Much has been written about Lower Robert Street, about its eerie atmosphere, and the story that it apparently even has a ghost, but in today’s post I will be concentrating on the history and architecture of the place, what it was like when the Adelphi was built, and the difficulty of showing Lower Robert Street on a map, although there is also a very tragic story that could have been the source of the ghost story.

When we walk into Lower Robert Street via the entrance shown in the above photo, we are walking under a 20th century building, and when the Adelphi was built, this was through an open gap at the end of a terrace of houses.

After passing under the later building, we get to the original, late 18th century stretch of the street, where it passes under the rear of one of the terrace buildings that line Robert Street above:

In the above photo, you can see the cheap approach to building this side of the buildings. The rear of the terrace was not meant to be on public display. It was not facing onto a street, and if you had business in the house (apart from those who were servants or workers), you would access the house from the front, on Robert Street.

The photo below shows the terrace of houses in Robert Street that the tunnel passes under, and shows the fine front of these buildings, Good brick work and decoration, compare with the cheap finish of the rear of the buildings:

Horwood’s 1799 map of London shows the area soon after the completion of the Adelphi.

In the following extract, the Adelphi is the rectangular block of terrace houses between Royal Adelphi Terrace and John Street (now John Adam Street), and to the left of the Adelphi, we can see Robert Street, and continuing to the left is George Street (now York Buildings):

In the above extract, the arrow points to the entrance in George Street / York Buildings to what is now Lower Robert Street, and as can be seen, this was an open entrance at the northern end of a terrace of houses, and that led into what appears to be a narrow, open space between the buildings in George Street and Robert Street – probably for service access to the buildings – a space that is open at its southern end.

Although not marked on the map, I assume that the length of tunnel underneath the house on Robert Street was there at the time, as the house is of the time of the Adelphi, and it would not have made much sense to build the tunnel at a later date.

I have marked the route of the tunnel and current route down to the south of the Adelphi with the red line in the above map.

This routing shows the source of the name as Lower Robert Street as part of the route runs below Robert Street.

A possible error in a map leads to an intriguing possibility.

I use OpenStreetMap as a source of maps for the blog, as they can be reproduced on non-commercial sites, and when checking OpenStreetMap for the area around the Adelphi, I found that it shows the route of Lower Robert Street mirroring the open space in the 1799 Horwood map, all the way down to the gap between rows of buildings at the southern end.

This can be seen in the following extract, and I have added the route of what is assumed to be Lower Robert Street today, and is shown in red (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

There was once very limited access between the two rows of buildings along the line of what is shown as Lower Robert Street in the above map, however it was not a street as implied by the map, and today is closed off at both ends.

If we follow the old part of the tunnel under the buildings on Robert Street, we can see the bright lights of the loading bay for the Adelphi at the end:

I assume that instead of the loading bay, the tunnel of Lower Robert Street provided access to the vaults underneath the Adelphi, and the view would have been of a series of arches, vaults and dark space running off into the distance.

We can get an impression of the area around Little Robert Street by looking at mentions in old newspapers, and the following dates from 1774, listing the prizes of the lottery held to raise finance for the construction of the Adelphi, where winners received houses or vaults:

A double vault for coach-house and stable with hay loft and servants rooms, over, on the north side of the Mews Street, situate between Lower Adam Street, and Lower Robert Street, being the first west from Lower Adam Street, which is let on and in occupation by Mr William Adam, Mr Capel, and Mess. Hodgson & Co. tenants at will at £34, 13s per annum.

A vault on the north side of Lower John Street westward of the vault facing Lower Robert Street. Ground rent 7s 6d per annum.

Note that as well as Lower Robert Street, the list mentions Lower Adam Street and Lower John Street, so there must have been a network of subterranean streets, with names mirroring the streets above.

We can get an idea of the size of the vaults and the uses to which they were put, from the following advert of leaseholds for sale in the Morning Herald on the 22nd of March, 1819:

“Numerous spacious Warehouses and Vaults, seven coach houses, stables for 50 horses, and other extensive and improvable premises, situate in Robert-street, Lower Adam-street, Lower Robert-street, Mews-street, Durham Street and under the Arcade, all in the Adelphi”

The rent obtainable from the above premises, which were already let, amounted to £448 8s per annum.

There is not much further mention of Lower Robert Street, or the vaults under the Adelphi. The build of the Embankment would later cut off the Adelphi from the Thames, so there was no opportunity to use the space for storing goods transported by river, and when there was an attempt to sell the vaults, warehouses, and houses around and under the Adelphi, they would not sell, perhaps indicative of the condition of the estate, certainly of the vaults below.

The record of the auction, from the London Daily Chronicle on the 22nd of June, 1927, includes Lower Robert Street within Lot 1, which compriosed:

“The freehold island block, Adelphi Terrace, including Nos. 1 to 10, John Street, 5 and 6 Robert Street, 19 Adam Street, the Adelphi foreground, with the lofty vaults and arches, embracing buildings in Adelphi Arches, Adelphi Cottages, Lower Robert Street, Lower Adam Street, part of Durham Hill, and ‘Jenny’s Hole’, together with soil of the subterranean private roads”

The contents of Lot 1 include some interesti8ng references. Firstly the “subterranean private roads” confirms that there was a network of streets below the Adelphi, which must have provided access to the vaults and warehouses below ground.

Secondly the reference to “Jenny’s Hole”.

There are a number of references to “Jenny’s Hole” the first is from Thackers Overland News on the 25th of March 1858, where:

“The notorious Adelphi arches will, it is expected, shortly cease to afford shelter to the helpless outcasts of London. They are in gradual process of letting. The most fearful den among them, one upon which had been bestowed the title of ‘Jenny’s Hole’ was taken a short time since by a publican for a wine-cellar”

The above article hints at the state of the area underneath the Adelphi, and the following report from Lloyds Weekly Newspaper on the 19th of September, 1852, paints an even darker picture, both of the area below the Adelphi, and of the tragic conditions that children could get into in 19th century London. It is a long and harrowing read:

“YOUTHFUL PROSTITUION AND DEATH – On Friday, Mr Langham, the deputy coroner for Westminster, held a lengthy inquiry at the St. Martin’s Workhouse, touching the death of Mary Ann Palmer, aged fifteen years, which occurred on Tuesday last at the workhouse, having been brought there by the police, who found here on the previous Sunday in a frightful state of disease and destitution, under the dark arches of the Adelphi in the Strand.

The case was one of these harrowing details exhibiting the horrible extent of juvenile prostitution in the metropolis, the bare recital of which appals the mind.

Sarah Cunningham, a girl only eighteen years of age, but whose appearance indicated the rapid course to an early grave, said that she had been fatherless and motherless since she was nine years old, having from that period got her livelihood on the streets, with the exception of about three months when she had a place shortly after her parents’ death (the jury shuddered as they looked upon the girl).

She formed an acquaintance with the deceased about eighteen months ago, since which time they had been companions up to her death.

The deceased and witness used to frequent an unoccupied stable, under the dark arches of the Adelphi, and a place also known as Jenny’s Hole down there from about half-past eight in the morning until nine at night, as they were too dirty and ragged to walk the streets, and they used to be visited by the young men working about the place, as also those passing to and fro by the halfpenny steamboats.

The police used to visit the place frequently, both day and night, but they were eluded, as the various girls went and hid, or left the place by another opening, returning again as soon as the constables had gone by.

The deceased was following her late course of life when the witness first met her, which was one evening at the Victoria theatre. The young men at the stables used to give them something to eat, and help to screen them from the police. They got no other money, but what they obtained under the arches in the way stated.

Deceased was very bad and had been in hospital twice. Witness had heard her say that she had a good home to go to – In answer to the coroner, witness stated that she would be glad to do anything that would take her off the streets.

Policeman Joseph Kelly, 137 F, said he found the deceased in ‘Jenny’s Hole’ on Sunday week last. She was lying down in a very bad state, being exceedingly filthy and loathsome in the extreme, labouring under a complication of diseases, and being covered in sores and vermin. Everything that could be done was done for her at the workhouse, but she died about four o’clock on Tuesday morning, the immediate cause being dropsy.

The father of the deceased said that she had been enticed from home nearly two years ago. He had spared no money on her education, and the last time he saw her alive was in November, when he had her home from the hospital and cleansed, but she soon went away again. She was his only child.

A verdict of ‘Natural Death’ was taken, and the coroner and jury sent the girl Cunningham to St. Mary’s workhouse, Lambeth, that being her father’s parish, and if she was not taken in, Mr. Testall, the master of St. Martin’s would receive her until her proper settlement was ascertained.”

A dreadful story, and one that tells much about being poor and at risk in London in the mid 19th century. The comment about whether the workhouse in Lambeth would accept Sarah Cunningham, was probably down to the common problem of lack of money, and a parish workhouse not wanting to take people from outside the parish, or seek more funds from those in the parish.

In many of the stories and accounts of Lower Robert Street on the Internet, there are references to Poor Jenny being a prostitute murdered by a client, and it is her screams that still haunt Lower Robert Street, and presumably where the name Jenny’s Hole came from.

The list of hauntings in London at this link, claims that Jenny was a prostitute murdered in 1875, and presumably is the source of the name Jenny’s Hole, however as can be seen in the above articles from 1852 and 1858, Jenny’s Hole was in use almost 25 years before the supposed murdered prostitute of the same name.

I cannot find the source of the name “Jenny’s Hole”, however I do find the tales of the haunting of Lower Robert Street a rather glib dismissal of the appalling and tragic conditions that young girls such as Mary Ann Palmer and Sarah Cunningham could find themselves in. and the way they were treated and abused.

At the bottom of the old tunnel of Lower Robert Street, looking back up in the direction of the entrance at York Buildings:

In the above photo, the Adelphi loading bay was behind me, and when I turned to the left, I could now look along the route of what may have been Lower Robert Street, and which is now part of the underground car park of the redeveloped Adelphi:

Which then leads to the exit onto Savoy Place – the street that runs between the Adelphi and Embankment Gardens. The exit / entrance can be seen to the left of the following photo:

In the following print of the original Adam’s development of the Adelphi, the entrance can be seen to the far left of the run of arches that faced from the vaults onto the foreshore of the Thames:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

I am still unsure of the full route of Lower Robert Street. There is only a very small part of the original structure remaining, where it passes under the terrace house on Robert Street.

Did it then turn right and head to the river side of the Adelphi? Was it an actual street, or more probably just an access route from the street to the west of the Adelphi that ran alongside the western edge of the vaults under the Adelphi to exist to the south.

The fact that there was also a Lower Adam Street (mirroring Adam Street on the east of the Adelphi) and Lower John Street (mirroring John Street to the north of the Adelphi, implies that there were three subterranean streets running along each of the western, northern and eastern sides of the vaults, with the southern side looking straight through the arches on to the Thames foreshore.

Whatever the source of the name Jenny’s Hole (it probably refers to a previous occupant of this small place, possibly an alcove within the vaults), it was where fifteen year old Mary Ann Palmer was found, and soon after died, and her death tells an important story of the tragic circumstances that children could find themselves in, in 19th century London.

And the small stretch of Lower Robert Street is the only surviving part of the subterranean environment beneath the Adelphi that she would recognise today.

You may also be interested in my post on the Embankment Gardens Art Exhibition and the Adelphi, which goes into more detail about the Adelphi.

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North Woolwich – A Station, Pier, Pleasure Gardens and Causeway

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Towards the end of last year, I published a number of posts about the Royal Docks also crossing the river via the Woolwich Ferry and Foot Tunnel to North Woolwich.

This is a really interesting part of east London with plenty to discover (I hope to have the area as a new walk later this year), and there is one last part of North Woolwich that I want to cover, a short walk along the river, starting by the entrance to the Woolwich Ferry, marked by the “S” to the left of the following map, with the blue dashed line showing the route covered in today’s post (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Starting by the approach to the ferry, if I look to the east, there is a walkway along the side of the river, with a pier running into the river at the end of the walkway:

The shed like building at the entrance to the pier (P in the above map):

A look inside confirms that the pier is derelict, although the metal framework to the pier looks substantial, the wooden flooring has decayed:

The pier is here because of the adjacent North Woolwich Station, which is just across the road from the pier.

When the station opened in 1847, there was nothing much on the north side of the river that needed a railway, but it was built to serve the town of Woolwich across the river, and the station did soon lead to developments on the north bank.

So that those living or working in Woolwich could reach the station, a ferry was needed, and two piers were built, one on the south and one on the north banks of the river. The pier on the southern side has long gone, but the north pier remains:

The shed at the end provided a rudimentary, covered waiting area and also included a small ticketing kiosk.

Initially two steam ferries of the Eastern Counties Railway, the “Kent” and the “Essex” crossed the river from this pier (when the service opened, North Woolwich was still part of the County of Kent, where it would remain for over another 100 years).

A third boat, the “Middlesex” arrived in 1879, followed by the “Woolwich” which replaced the original “Kent” and “Essex”.

Soon after the opening of the service, the South Eastern Railway had opened a rail service direct to Woolwich, and the Woolwich Free Ferry arrived in 1889.

Despite the challenges of the direct rail service to Woolwich and the Free Ferry, the ferry service operated by what was now the Great Eastern Railway, continued until 1908, when it was no longer financially viable, and closed.

The pier on the south of the river was soon demolished, however the pier at North Woolwich became a calling point for steam boats providing a service out to Southend and Margate.

The number of ferries using the pier tailed off significantly after the Second World War, and the last record I can find of the pier being used for ferry traffic was in August 1950, when children from the Hay Currie School in Poplar boarded a boat at the pier for a trip along the Thames.

Perhaps the strangest use for the pier was in April 1983 when a 112 pound bomb was dredged up from the Thames near Waterloo Bridge.

The bomb was defused at the scene, then taken by boat down to North Woolwich Pier, where it was transferred to a lorry, which took the bomb to Shoeburyness, where it was safely exploded.

The walkway along the river runs up to a raised platform next to the pier, and this is the opposite side of the shed at the land side end of the pier:

On the platform is this rather good information panel showing key places in North Woolwich, with a brief paragraph about their history:

The North Woolwich Pier was built to provide rail passengers with transport to and from Woolwich, and opposite the pier is the old station building:

As mentioned earlier, and in my posts about the Royal Docks, North Woolwich Station arrived before the construction of any of the Royal Docks. The line and original wooden station building opened in 1847 by Eastern Counties Railway, who in July 1847, “gave an excursion train on Monday last, from Ely to London, Woolwich, Greenwich and Gravesend, the company being taken by the new line to the North Woolwich Station, where steamers were in readiness to carry them whither their inclination led them. About 250 persons availed them of the trip. The train returned to Cambridge by 9 o’clock.”

I can imagine that if you lived in the Cambridgeshire city of Ely in 1847, London, as well as places such as Woolwich, Greenwich and Gravesend, along with all the river traffic and trade, would have been perhaps a once in a lifetime trip, certainly a trip to some of the rarely visited parts of a dynamic part of London (or Kent as it was then, however many newspaper reports referred to North Woolwich as being in Essex).

The station building that we see today was built in 1854, and by the end of the 19th century, we can see the station and rail tracks in the following extract from the OS map. (North Woolwich Pier is in the green circle, a hotel (see next in the post) is in the red oval, and causeway (see later in post) is in the blue oval. The station is to the left of the red oval) (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

The following extract from the 1927 edition of the Railway Clearing House Official Railway Map of London and its Environs shows the railways around the full Royal Docks complex, with the North Woolwich branch heading down, between the Victoria and Albert Docks, to the station which terminated the branch:

And in the following enlargement, we can see the two, competing, ferries across the river, the Free Ferry and the London and North Eastern Ferry (the former Eastern Counties Railway):

The 1854 station building was taken out of use in 1979 during a period of major maintenance to the North Woolwich branch line, and a new station building was constructed to the south of the station, alongside what is now Pier Road:

Attribution: Alexandra Lanes, Copyrighted free use, via Wikimedia Commons

The old station remained empty until 1984 when it was opened as a railway museum by the Passmore Edwards Trust.

The North Woolwich branch line closed in December 2006, and the museum closed two years later.

I checked the Historic England map of listings, and the 1854 station building is Grade II listed.

The building is now occupied by the New Covenant Church.

Going back to the extract from the OS map. within the red oval is a building marked as a hotel. The hotel was the Royal Pavilion Hotel, and at the rear and to the north of the hotel were the Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens – gardens that would lead to the Royal Victoria Gardens, the open space with trees shown to the right of the hotel.

The hotel and pleasure gardens were there because of North Woolwich Station (shown to the left of the red oval in the above map), and the pier.

When the line was completed, and the station opened in 1847, much of this part of North Woolwich was empty and undeveloped. The Royal Victoria Dock to the north would not open until 1855.

In the 19th century, as the railways expanded across the country, the opening of a new station was often associated with the opening of a hotel, and even in what must have been the empty and windswept shores of the Thames at North Woolwich, the Royal Pavilion was built facing the station, and adjacent to the pier.

Pleasure Gardens were often found across London by the river, and to attract customers, the hotel opened the Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens, with an aim of attracting customers from Woolwich via the ferry, or from the rest of London via the railway.

An advert in the Kentish Independent on the 24th of July, 1852 reads:

Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens – North Woolwich – Admission Sixpence

THE ABOVE GARDENS will be opened to the Public THIS DAY (SATURDAY)

A talented Quadrille and Brass Band will be in attendance, Conductor, MR. GRATTAN COOKE. Refreshments, White Bait, Wines &c., of the best quality will be served in the gardens, and the Royal Pavilion Hotel.

Trains leave the East Counties Railway, Bishopsgate Station, calling at Mile End, Stratford Bridge, and Barking Road, at a Quarter before and a Quarter after the Hour (One o-Clock excepted) throughout the day.

Steam Packets leave Hungerford Bridge, and London Bridge and the intermediate Piers, every Twenty Minutes. The Eastern Counties Railway Company’s Steam Packets ply between the Pavilion Pier and the Town of Woolwich, constantly throughout the day.

In August, 1952, the Pleasure Gardens were advertising “SPLENDID ILLUMINATIONS, Fireworks by Cotton of Vauxhall”, with “Gala Nights, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Fireworks at Half-past Ten.”

It must have seemed rather a strange place to have a Pleasure Gardens, however given the location next to the river, and the lack of development, I can imagine that this was a rather good place to spend a summer’s evening in the 1850s, however this isolation would not last long, as the Royal Victoria Dock opened in 1855, and around the same time, plots of land were being advertised for sale for building, and adverts of these mentioned the proximity to the Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens.

The following 1956 revision of the OS map shows the hotel was then a Public House. The space is now occupied by a new block of flats. The map also shows how the tracks at North Woolwich station had expanded to the west of the station building, with space for goods traffic as well as holding trains (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Looking around the back of the station building, we can still see the cast iron supports for the canopy that was once at the rear of the station:

And a sign along the fence shows the use to which the area to the rear of the station was put in the recent past:

Leaving the old station and pier, I am continuing east along the river walkway, which runs along the southern edge of the Royal Victoria Gardens:

The Royal Victoria Gardens occupy much of the space of the old Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens.

The Pleasure Gardens continued in use until the late 1880s. They were very popular, and there are newspaper reports of the crowds that would head to the gardens in the summer, however by the end of the 1880s the pleasure gardens were in financial trouble, and the gardens were taken over by the London County Council, and renamed as the Royal Victoria Gardens.

The gardens suffered much bomb damage during the last war, resulting in the loss of many of the original features of the gardens, which included features such as an Italian garden, a maze, flower beds and a rifle range, however the gardens remain a really good area of green space, with the added benefit of being alongside the River Thames.

The walk along the river is part of the North Woolwich Trail organised by the “Ports of Call” initiative, with “Works of art at the Royal Docks”.

I was unaware of this, until I saw one of their plaques on the wall along the river, by the Royal Victoria Gardens. Click here for the Ports of Call website.

There is an interesting example of industrial machinery in the Royal Victoria Gardens:

This is a steam hammer, dating from 1888, and was from the blacksmith’s shop of R.H. Green and Silley Wier Ltd, at the Royal Albert Docks, on the site of what are today, the buildings of London City Airport. The steam hammer was installed in the gardens in 1994.

Looking back along the walkway between the Thames and the Royal Victoria Gardens, with the pier of the Woolwich Free Ferry in the distance:

Continuing along the walkway along the river, the gardens are replaced by blocks of flats, and I have come to the first of two small docks, where there is a sloping causeway into the river, which the walkway bends around:

This first one is not named. It is shown on the OS maps earlier in the post, so it was here in the late 19th century, when it was at the end of what is now Woolwich Manor Way. I also checked the Port of London Authority listing of all the “Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames”, and whilst it is clearly a well built and useable landing place, the PLA listing makes no reference to the dock.

Continuing along the river walkway:

And I come to the dock which is shown on the maps, and is in the PLA listing. This is Bargehouse Causeway:

In the PLA listing, it is called “Old Barge House Drawdock”, and the listing states that there were “Stone setts on wooden piles”. The OS maps do not name the causeway, but show that a causeway extended out from the dock, however if this still exists, it was not visible due to the state of the tide during my visit.

The word Drawdock refers to a place where a boat could be drawn out from the river.

The sign on the pole states that there is no mooring and the causeway is not in use for personal water craft. The location of the pole probably makes the causeway difficult to use as it is placed in the middle of the approach to the landing place.

Although it is just Bargehouse Causeway today, the use of the name Old Barge House Drawdock in the PLA listing provides a better indication of its age.

The causeway is the site of one of the first ferries between what is now North Woolwich, and the town of Woolwich, between what was Essex and Kent, and was first mentioned in 1308.

There are very few mentions of the ferry up until the end of the 18th century, and in the following decades the ferry at Old Barge House Drawdock seems to have been a very active place.

It was in use for foot passengers crossing the Thames, as well as farmers taking their produce to market, with a frequent route being Kent farmers taking cattle to market in Romford.

The name of the draw dock seems to have come from the home of one of the early operators of the ferry, who had dragged up an old barge from the river, and lived in the barge above the shoreline.

In the OS maps shown earlier in the post, you can see a building with the PH for Public House, and the pub was on the site of the old barge, and took the name of the Old Barge Inn.

During much of the 19th century, the ferry was very busy, and the Army also introduced their own ferry between Woolwich and Old Barge House Drawdock.

Such was the popularity of the crossing, one of the operators of the ferry embarked on the following works, reported in the Kentish Mercury on the 9th of May, 1840:

“WOOLWICH FERRY – Mr. Thomas Howe, proprietor of the Old Barge House, Woolwich Ferry, has nearly completed the embankment of the Thames, which he commenced during the latter end of last summer. The esplanade now formed is about one thousand feet in length, with a depth of one hundred and fifty, and is raised to the height of twenty feet above high-water mark.

The whole level has been laid down with grass turf, and surrounded by a neat railing, and when completed will form one of the most pleasing promenades on the banks of the Thames, commanding, as it does a perfect view of Woolwich, with its Dock-yard and Arsenal, together with Plumstead, Shooter’s Hill, and the delightful scenery of Kent.

Upwards of one thousand barge-loads of rubbish have been employed in forming this embankment. The traffic between the two counties has increased about one hundred per cent since the improvement on this ferry commenced. The thousands who pass the ‘Old Barge House’ will scarcely observe that this favourite spot in in the county of Kent, notwithstanding it is situated on the Essex shore.”

Strange to think whilst standing at the dock, that this was once described as one of the most pleasing promenades on the banks of the Thames, however it was rare for a large area of space, with good transport connections, and green space, to be found along the river. The Victoria Embankment had yet to be built, and much of the river, on both north and south banks was industrialised, so I can imagine that this place in North Woolwich was a very pleasant place to visit.

What killed off the ferry from the Old Barge House Drawdock, was the opening in 1889 of the Woolwich Free Ferry. A ferry where you had to pay to cross the river could not compete with a free ferry which was a very short distance away.

The view towards the east, along the Thames from the concrete ramp at Old Barge House Causeway:

Walking up from the Barge House Causeway / Drawdock, requires walking up a ramp, and then steps or a longer ramp to get down to Barge House Road, which leads up to Albert Road.

The road is obviously named after the pub (which stood to the left of the following photo), and the old drawdock, and the barge used at some point as a home by an operator of the ferry:

This was such an interesting, short walk.

Royal Victoria Gardens is a lovely open space along the river, which owes its existence to the Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens and the associated hotel, once at the western end of the gardens, and the promenade built by the owner of the Barge House pub at the eastern end of the gardens.

These were both places that were built due to the availability of adjacent transport routes, and seem to have been places that attracted thousands of visitors to North Woolwich in the decades around the middle of the 19th century.

The need for the ramp and river walkway walls to built up, can be seen from the above photo, where the low lying area of North Woolwich is today still protected from high tides by large concrete walls and ramps.

It would be interesting to find out if any of the “one thousand barge-loads of rubbish” that were used to formed the embankment in 1840 is still there, as I suspect it would offer an interesting look into mid-19th century life.

I hope to be offering some walks around North Woolwich and the Royal Docks later in the year – if I can get organised in time, as this is a really interesting part of east London to explore.

alondoninheritance.com

Soho Pubs – Part 3

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Just a relatively short post this Sunday as during the last week, all five days were on Jury Service, but it does give me the opportunity to continue the series of posts I started last August, looking at the pubs of Soho, and for part three, I am starting with:

The Spice of Life – Moor Street

The Spice of Life occupies a prominent position, at the end of two streets (Moor Street, to the right in the above photo, and Romilly Street to the left), and facing onto Cambridge Circus. In the over 200 years of the pub’s existence, it seems to have swapped the Moor Street and Romilly Street names, as the location of the pub, with today Moor Street being the address.

The pub seems to date from the late 18th century, when it was originally called the George, or the George and Thirteen Cantons, however I suspect the current building dates from the late 19th century and is of very similar architectural style to the Cambridge which I will look at next.

I cannot find any firm reference to this name, apart from it being used in a for sale advert in 1892 when it was listed as a “freehold property known as the George and Thirteen Cantons”.

The pub had a very similar, unusual name to another Soho pub, the Sun and 13 Cantons in Great Pulteney Street, and I assume the source of the name is the same for both, and from the Swiss watch-making community that lived and worked in Soho in the late 1800s.

By 1935, the pubs was known by two names, still the George and Thirteen Cantons, but also now the Scots Hoose.

I found this in newspaper reports on the 28th of September, 1935, where details of the will of a former licensee where given, as:

“John Ingram Moar, of ‘The Scots Hoose’, Cambridge Circus, London, licensee of ‘The George and 13 Cantos’, better known as ‘The Scots Hoose’ in Soho, who had been a licensee in the West End of London for over 50 years. Net personality £29,566; gross, £30,314.”

The George and 13 Cantons name seems have disappeared by the 1950s and 1960s, where the only reference to the pub is as “The Scots Hoose”, and a 1966 review in the Tatler provides an glimpse of the pub:

“The Scots Hoose, Romilly Street. Not surprisingly, the landlord, ‘Jock’ Ansell, is a Scot. He is a retired musician and has worked with such stars as Jack Hylton and Bruce Forsyth. His pub was once the haunt of the Crazy Gang. Nowadays he prides himself on the finest selection of whiskies in Soho. You can buy a nip of Glen Grant (100 degrees of proof malt whisky) for 3s 6d. Gold painted thistles decorate the walls, but otherwise the atmosphere is disappointingly English, with a recurring chant of ‘arf a bitter, guv'”

The description of the pub as “disappointingly English” does not do justice to the Scots Hoose of the 1960s, as it was a popular and well know music venue, as we find in the Stage from the 31st of August, 1967:

“In another popular North of the Thames pub, the Railway Tavern of Tottenham, the Kevin Lindsay Organ Trio has taken up residence, and in the West End’s only music-hall pub, the Scots Hoose, Cambridge Circus, Doreen Ansell has captured Wakefield born pianist Barry Booth, former MD for Roy Orbison, to provide the backing for popular residents Tommy Osborne and Roy Tierney.”

I do not think the description of the pub as a “music-hall pub” is that accurate, rather it was a pub which hosted live music, not traditional music hall acts, and in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Scots Hoose was one of the London pubs where many of the rising acts of the British Folk revival could be regularly found.

A regular was Bert Jansch, a Scottish Folk musician who had moved down to London, as well as Folk performers such as Ralph McTell, Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny.

One of Sandy Denny’s early home recordings was a song called Soho, a lyrical description of mid-1960s Soho, with the first few lyrics:

Come walk the streets of crime
And colour bright the corners
Of love with the earth

See the dazzling nightlife grow
Beyond the dawn and burning
In the heart of Soho

Hear the market cries
And see their wares displayed
Through the window of your soul

From Sandy’s performance of the song on Youtube:

The pub had changed name to “The Spice of Life” by the early 1980s, and as well as music, the pub seems to have been hosting plays, as there are adverts for these, with, for example, the following from “The Stage and Television Today” in March 1983:

“A COUPLA WHITE CHICKS SITTING AROUND TALKING, BY John Ford Noonan. Spice of Life, Cambridge Circus WC2 to March 26. Cast includes, Monica Buferd, Lynn Webster, Director Siobhan Nicholas”

Today, the Spice of Life is still an active music venue, with a regular Jazz Club, Blues, Soul and occasionally other types of acts such as Comedy performances.

The Cambridge – Charing Cross Road

The Cambridge is on the other side of Moor Street to the Spice of Life, but where the Spice of Life is slightly set back from Cambridge Circus, the Cambridge faces directly onto Cambridge Circus, and the pub has a Charing Cross Road address.

The building dates from 1887, and seems to have been part of the construction of Charing Cross Road, which also included the build of Cambridge Circus, although the pub was built on the site of a previous pub which went by the name of the King’s Arms.

Cambridge Circus is named after the Duke of Cambridge who officially opened Charing Cross Road on Saturday 26th February 1887, and the pub seems to have followed the same naming route, following the change from the King’s Arms.

Whilst the Cambridge has the usual news reports about the type of low level incidents and events, typical of Soho, in August 1991, the pub was part of the latest campaign of bombings by the IRA. The following is a typical news report from the time:

“A pub landlord said today he was shocked to learn he may have been the victim of an IRA firebomb attack. ‘The Cambridge’, in the heart of London’s West End, was badly damaged in the attack eight days ago.

But police have only just disclosed that the fire was likely to have been the work of the IRA.

Landlord John Pucci (50) said, ‘Police Officers came here and told me they thought the IRA was involved. It was a bit of a shock to say the least.

I don’t know why they picked on this pub. It’s not an Irish pub, or a police pub and we don’t hold meetings of any kind. It’s very much passing trade, tourists and people going shopping. I imagine the idea was purely to disrupt the West End.

Mr. Pucci, who has run ‘The Cambridge’ on the corner of Cambridge Circus in Charing Cross Road for five years said he was woken by the fire alarm at 7:15 am. When he opened the door between his flat and the top bar he was met by sheets of flame.

He said his wife Nina, his 20 year old son Julian and assistant manager Andrew Prime got out through the second-floor window only by climbing down a fire brigade ladder. Another five minutes and we would have been goners, he said.

The blaze completely gutted the top bar – the fire was so intense a television 25 feet from where the device was stuffed behind a seat, exploded.

Surveying the damage estimated at £200,000, Mr. Pucci said, ‘If it had gone off in the evening there would have been a few people roasted’. Remains of the device, about the size of a cassette tape, were found to be similar to incendiary bombs abandoned at Preston railway station in April.

Detectives believe the same kind of device triggered fires in several shops in the centre of Manchester.”

The bomb at the Cambridge was not the only time that Charing Cross Road was targeted during the IRA’s 1991 bombing campaign as later that year, in September, a similar incendiary bomb, but this time unexploded, was found in the Bargain Books of Oxford bookshop.

Thankfully, not all events in Soho’s pubs have been so potentially devastating.

Coach and Horses – Old Compton Street

The Coach and Horses on the corner of Old Compton Street and Charing Cross Road is interesting as it did was not originally built as a pub, but, as described in the details of the Grade II listing, is a “Rare survival of early house representing the earliest phase of Soho’s development”, and that it dates from the “Late C17/early C18 with later alterations”, so as the listing states, it really is a rare survivor from the first stages of Soho’s development.

I cannot find exactly when the building changed from being a residential house to a pub. The pub’s website states that it dates back to 1731. The first written reference I can find to the pub is rather confusing. It dates from the 3rd of December, 1814, where in the Durham County Advertiser, there is an advert. At the top a drawing of a stage coach with horses on the road, below which is written:

“The old established and original CITY OF DURHAM HOUSE, COACH AND HORSES, LITTLE COMPTON STREET, SOHO, LONDON. William Hopper (Late of the City of Durham) returns his most grateful thanks for the favours he has been honoured with since his Uncle’s death , and begs to informs his friends, countrymen and the public in general that very comfortable accommodation is afforded for their comfort. Wines and spirits of the best quality. Good beds are provided for his friends. Exclusive of the London papers. he takes in those of York, Durham, Newcastle and Dumfries.”

I am really not sure what this advert means. Is “City of Durham House” a sort of additional trading name for the Coach & Horses, which may have been the point where a coach service to the north east operated from (although I can find no other evidence of this, but it would explain the name of the pub), and which provided accommodation for those arriving from, or departing to the north east?

I have no idea, just one of those little historical mysteries. Note though that in the advert the pub was in Little Compton Street, which was the original name for the street prior to the construction of Charing Cross Road and the rename to Old Compton Street.

Although the pub still retains its original name, it has had a couple of name changes, first to Molly Moggs, in 1996, when it was one of Soho’s gay pubs, then in 2017 it changed to the Compton Cross, and following the purchase of the pub by Shephard Neame in 2019, along with a major restoration, the name returned to the original Coach and Horses.

The Pillars of Hercules – Greek Street

I have included the Pillars of Hercules in Greek Street, although despite the pub sign hanging from the front of the building, the traditional Pillars of Hercules closed in 2018.

The name comes from the promontories on either side of the straights of Gibraltar, and which form the entrance to the Mediterranean. The name is of some antiquity and was used by Pliny the Elder in the first century AD, and is almost certainly much older.

The pub sign shows Hercules with his back to one pillar, and his hands on the front of a second pillar. The relevance of the entry to the Mediterranean is that it would have once been the limit of the known world, and was the furthest point to which Hercules ventured, or that Hercules is holding back, or narrowing the entrance, or the pillars are holding up the sky – there are a number of interpretations.

There has been a pub on the site since 1733, although I cannot find confirmation that the name has remained the same since that date, although it has been in use for a long time.

The pub closed in 2018 and reopened as Bar Hercules, and is now a Cocktail bar within the Simmonds chain.

The present building is relatively recent, having been built around 1910, and when open, the pub had a lovely sign running above the pub and over the passage which is the entrance to Manette Street, as shown in this photo from 2008:

Attribution: Ewan Munro from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Today, the front of the old pub looks very sad following the lost of the pub name:

I do not know why the original pub closed, from memory, it always seemed to be busy, and on summer evenings, the pavement outside would be crowded with drinkers.

A sad loss.

The Green Man – Berwick Street

As can be seen in the above photo, the Green Man occupies two buildings. They both have individual Grade II listings, and the Green Man did not always occupy both buildings.

The building on the right is the original Green Man, with the listing stating that it is a Public House, early 19th century.

For the building on the left, the listing states “Former terrace house. Front of same build as early C19 adjoining No. 57 but probably refronting of earlier C18 fabric.” so it was originally a house, and seems to have an older internal fabric than the original Green Man building.

The listing for the pub states early 19th century, and the first record of the pub that I can find is from 1822, when, in a court case a prisoner was being tried for a number of offences, including stealing “a new pair of linen sheets” from the Green Man after he had stayed in one of the pub’s rooms.

The Green Man was one of the pubs in London that held “Repeal Meetings”. These were meeting organised by the Repeal Association which was an Irish movement founded by Daniel O;Connell in 1830 to campaign for the repeal of the 1800 Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland.

Other London pubs holding repeal meetings during the same week (15th January 1842) included the Union Arms on Holborn Hill and Buckley’s Rooms in Old Boswell Court.

The campaign seems to have been for an independent Ireland, but still within the British Empire – “the same right of legislative independence as England, always subject to the constitutional supremacy of the British Crown” as described in one of the speeches during the Repeal meeting in the Green Man.

Many London pubs were places where campaigns such as the Repeal Association would meet, and they would also be the meeting places of various clubs and associations, and one club meeting in the Green Man was, perhaps rather unusual for central Soho, as the Green Man was the meeting place in the 1870s for the United Marlborough Brothers – one of the very many London Angling Clubs that met in lots of pubs across the wider city.

I cannot find when the Green Man took over the house next door to become the double fronted pub we see today, however it is a wonderful survivor and as far as I can trace, the Green Man has been the continuous name of the pub since the pub was opened over 200 years ago.

A few more of the many pubs that can still be found across the streets of Soho.

alondoninheritance.com

The Bank Junction – The Historic Centre of London?

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There are a number of options for the centre of London, almost all dependent on how you define the centre of a city such as London. For today’s post, I am going to go for the Bank Junction as the historic centre of London – that point where several key roads meet in the City, in front of the Bank of England, Royal Exchange and Mansion House, which until recently, has been a place busy with traffic and people, as this image from the late 19th century illustrates, looking across from outside the Mansion House to the Royal Exchange, when it was described as “The open space bounded by the Exchange, the Bank, and the Mansion House is perhaps the busiest in all the City:

And it was much the same in the 1920s, although there are some subtle differences, including the war memorial that now stands in front of the Royal Exchange as the photo below was taken not that long after the First World War:

This is a very old part of the City, once at the heart of the Roman City, with very many Roman remains having been found deep below the current surface level.

The 16th century “Agas” map shows the key streets of Cornhill, what is now Threadneedle Street, and Poultry, and by the 1682 map of William Morgan, we can see the area around the Bank junction (which is slightly left of centre in the following extract), with the second iteration of the Royal Exchange (after the first was lost during the Great Fire of 1666), and where Poultry and Cornhill meet, we can see the Wool Church Market, at the site of the future Mansion House (see this post on St Mary Woolchurch, and the wool market):

By the time of Rocque’s 1746 map, we can see that the Wool Market has now been replaced by the Mansion House, and the first building of the Bank of England is shown in Threadneedle Street, simply labelled as “The Bank”:

By Horwood’s map of 1799, we can see how the rapid expansion of the Bank of England has taken up so much space between Threadneedle Street and Throgmorton Street:

In all the above maps, there are only four streets converging on the Bank junction – Cornhill, Lombard Street, Poultry and Threadneedle Street. The junction would get far more complex with the “improvements” to the City implemented by the Victorians during the 19th century, which would leave us with the junction we see today in the centre of the following map:

Where we can now see that Queen Victoria Street joins the junction via Poultry, King William Street has been built, with Lombard Street now joining the junction via this new street, and finally Princes Street, which was widened and straightened along the western side of the enlarged Bank of England.

And this was why the Bank junction was so busy. Cornhill to Poultry and Cheapside was for long a significant east – west route. The new Princes Street and King William Street added a north – south route to London Bridge, and Queen Victoria Street provided a direct route down to Blackfriars Bridge along with the Embankment route to Westminster.

To these through routes was added all the local traffic to the offices, shops and businesses across the City of London.

The geology of the area is one of the reasons why the City was established where it is. In the following extract from the brilliant topographic-map.com, the height of the land across the City is colour coded so that the blue / greens represent decreasing height and yellow to red indicates increasing height:

We can see the Bank junction just to the lower right of the centre of the map, and Cornhill is a hill that runs up to the highest land just to the right of Leadenhall Market.

The higher land around and to the right of the Bank junction is not as pronounced today as it was many centuries ago. Building and street levelling over the centuries has resulted in higher ground being much less pronounced, and originally, the land at and to the right of the Bank was one of the two main hills of the City, with the other being around St. Paul’s Cathedral, before the drop down to the Fleet River.

One of the City’s lost rivers, the River Walbrook once flowed slightly to the west of the Bank junction, cutting across where Queen Victoria Street, Poultry and Princes Street now run, at a much lower level to the current street surface.

Bank junction today, looking across to the Royal Exchange, with the Bank of England on the left:

There are two main differences between the view across the junction of today, and that of the recent past.

Firstly, and most obviously, are the tower blocks in the background. Secondly it is the lack of road traffic.

Over recent few years, the City of London Corporation have been restricting vehicle access across the City, and the impact of this can be plainly seen at the Bank. The part of Threadneedle Street to the left of the Royal Exchange has been pedestrianised, and the complex restrictions are summarised in the following extract from the City of London’s website:

I have mentioned this before, but whilst these restrictions have resulted in a much more pleasant place to walk, better air quality, and providing an environment where it is much easier to see the buildings surrounding the junction – it does leave this central part of the City lacking a sense or urgency and activity, of a vibrant and thriving place. It is probably though just the change from the City that I knew for many decades.

Apart from the new Victorian streets, the layout of the Bank junction has not changed that much, just the buildings that line the streets.

This was the view from outside Mansion House, looking across to the Royal Exchange in 1804, where the open space we see today in front of the Royal Exchange, was then occupied by Bank Buildings. The Bank of England is on the left and the tower of the version of the Royal Exchange rebuilt after the Great Fire is on the right:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

So there has been major rebuilding of the buildings that surround the junction, but the layout of the junction has remained much the same for centuries, with the addition of new streets in the 19th century.

The times when the actual junction has needed a rebuild is when the Bank underground station arrived, and when the junction, and the station below, was seriously damaged by a bomb on the night of the 11th January, 1941, when the bomb went through the road surface and exploded in the booking hall of the station, as illustrated in the following photo:

AIR RAID DAMAGE (HU 640) The Bank of England and Royal Exchange after the raid during the night of 11 January 1941. The bomb exploded in the booking-hall of the Bank Underground Station. The crater, 1,800 sq ft in area, was the largest in London. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205068679

Many of those in the station at the time where sheltering, and the bomb caused the death of 56 people, with many more being injured, and today there is a plaque in the station recording the event:

Time for a walk around, to look at the streets and the buildings that surround the junction, starting with the streets. In the following photo is the Royal Exchange, and Cornhill is the street leading of to the right of the photo:

Cornhill is an old street, and one of the principal streets of the City. The earliest written record of the street dates from around 1125 when it was recorded as Cornhilla.

The “hill” element of the name is due to the street running up the western slope of the hill that peaks north-east of Leadenhall Market and “Corn” comes from the association with a corn market that was “held here time out of mind”, as recorded by Stow.

In the following photo is Princes Street, running along the western edge of the Bank of England:

An earlier Princes Street can be seen in the 18th century maps shown earlier in the post, however the Princes Street we see today has been straightened with the loss of a northern section, by the 19th century extension of the Bank of England.

In the following photo, the red bus is in Poultry, which is the street leading west out of the junction:

Poultry is another old street, with first mentions being in the 12th and 13th centuries. The name comes from the markets that were held here where poulters sold their produce.

In the above photo, the River Walbrook once ran across the street, in front of the new building in the centre of the view, the Grade II* listed No 1 Poultry, designed by James Stirling in the 1980s, although the building was not completed until 1997.

The photo shows how much land levels have changed over the centuries, as today there is no sign of the small valley in which the Walbrook ran, which was well below the current level of the street surface, which can be seen by a visit to the Temple of Mithras, now on display at the London Mithraeum, built as part of the construction of Bloomberg’s new European headquarters, a short distance to the south.

A slightly different view, with Queen Victoria Street running to the left of the new building:

Queen Victoria Street was built to help with the growing levels of traffic in the City, and to provide a direct route from the Bank junction, down to Blackfriars Bridge, and the new Embankment.

Construction was recommended in 1861 and included in the Metropolitan Improvement Act of 1863. The new street opened in 1871.

The new street resulted in the loss of numerous courts and alleys, as well as streets of a larger extent, which were swept away for its formation. Amongst those which had occupied the site of the new street were Five Foot Lane, Dove Court, Old Fish Street Hill, Lambeth Hill (part), Bennet’s Hill (part), St Peter’s Hill (part), Earl Street, Bristol Street, White Bear Alley and White Horse Court.

To the left of the above photos is Mansion House:

A permanent building for the official residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London was one of the considerations for rebuilding the City after the Great Fire, however these plans were not realised until the 18th century.

The site of the old market was appropriate as it was located at a junction of important streets, which did not have any significant monuments.

The architect was George Dance the Elder, who at the time was the City of London’s Clerk of Works. and who took on the challenge of designing a building fit for the Lord Mayor of a growing City and which was able to accommodate both ceremonial functions as well as providing rooms for a private residence.

Work started in 1739, with completion in 1758, and the first Lord Mayor to take up residence was Sir Crispin Gascoigne.

The main reception room was (and still is) the Great Egyptian Hall. Not strictly speaking an Egyptian Hall, rather one based on an account by the Roman writer Vitruvius of what such a room may have looked like. The room today has a barrel roof which was the later work of George Dance the Younger in 1795. as the elder Dance had built a large upper storey, which must have looked out of place, and is shown in the following print of the Mansion House after completion:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The large blocks on the roof were intended to give the impression of a complete upper floor as a backdrop to the Corinthian portico at the front of the building, but they look more of a distraction than an improvement.

There have been minor changes to the building since the end of the 18th century, but essentially, when viewed from the Bank junction, the building looks much the same today as it did when it was the first major City building at this important junction.

Moving around the junction, and this is the view looking down King William Street, built after approval was given in an 1829 Act of Parliament as part of improvements to the approach to London Bridge. The street was later widened between 1881 and 1884.

In the following photo, the church is St Mary Woolnoth, (see this post for the story of the Church with the Underground in the Crypt). King William Street is to the right of the church, with Lombard Street to the left. Before King William Street was built, Lombard Street ran up to the Bank junction. Lombard Street is an old City street, with a first mention back in 1319, and dependent on spelling, there may have been an earlier record of the street in 1108.

This is the view along Cornhill:

There is a statue in the middle of the road in the above photo, and it is rather appropriate given that much of the Bank junction sits on top of Bank underground station.

The statue is to the inventor of the Greathead tunnelling shield – James Henry Greathead:

Greathead was a South African, who came to London at the age of 15 and in 1864 he was apprenticed to the civil engineer Peter Barlow.

Five years later at the age of 24, in 1869, Greathead took on the construction of the Tower subway, the pedestrian tunnel under the river from outside the Tower of London.

Tunneling under the river was a challenge, given the soft, waterlogged nature of the ground, not that far below the bed of the Thames.

To address this challenge, Greathead devised what became known as the Greathead Shield, although it was based on a shield design originally used by Brunel, but with a number of improvements.

Greathead went on to work on other tunnelling projects, a number of which route through the Bank, including the City & South London line, which at the time terminated at King William Street (now part of the Northern Line), and the Waterloo and City Line, which now has its City termination at the Bank underground station.

The statue of Greathead is relatively recent, dating from 1994, when it was placed there for a specific reason. If you look below the statue of Greathead, at the area between the feet of the statue and the stone plinth, there is a grill that runs the full circumference of the statue, revealing its true purpose, as it is an air vent for the station beneath, and rather than just have a plain air vent, the statue of a person who was one of those responsible for the continuous improvement in tunnelling under London was a suitable addition to sit on top of Bank underground station.

We now come to the Royal Exchange:

The history of the Royal Exchange goes back to the City of London’s position as a major trading centre.

Long before the days of electronic communications, trading was a person to person business, with traders meeting and agreeing on prices, terms etc. All these embryonic activities led to institutions such as Lloyds of London, the London Stock Exchange, and all the other various exchanges for metals, coal etc.

In the 16th century, much trading was carried out on the street, or in the small houses and shops that lined streets such as Cornhill and Lombard Street, and there had been calls for a dedicated place where people could meet to trade, agree prices, and generally conduct business of all types.

Enter Sir Richard Gresham who became aware of the opening of a Bourse, or trading centre in Antwerp, one of the major trading centres of Europe. Gresham pushed for such a building to be constructed in the City of London, however despite the project receiving royal support, there was no suitable space available.

The proposal was taken up by his son, Sir Thomas Gresham, who also knew of the Antwerp Bourse, as he was based in the city for a number of years as a trader, working on behalf of the Crown, and trading on his own behalf.

Gresham put his own money into the project, along with significant funding generated through public subscriptions, which supported the purchase of a block of land in Cornhill Street, a short distance from what is now the Bank junction, and occupying the same site as the current Royal Exchange.

The building was opened by Queen Elizabeth I in January 1570, and it was the first, large, Renaissance style building in the City.

This first Royal Exchange was destroyed during the 1666 Great Fire, and was soon rebuilt following a design by Edward Jarman, but, as shown in the maps at the top of the post, it still faced onto Cornhill, and in the area in front of today’s Royal Exchange, there was a triangular cluster of buildings.

The following print shows the Royal Exchange as rebuilt following the Great Fire, with the main entrance facing onto Cornhill:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The Royal Exchange consisted of a large central courtyard, surrounded by four wings which held offices for meetings, shops, cellars below for the storage of goods etc, as shown in the following print:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

This second iteration of the Royal Exchange lasted until 1838, when, as with the first, it was also burnt down, with the following print showing the still smouldering remains of the building:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The Royal Exchange was soon rebuilt, following a competition to find a design. The competition was won by the architect William Tite, who seems to have also been one of the judges of the competition.

Tite’s design follows the layout of the original two Exchanges, with a central courtyard surrounded by four wings of offices and shops, however Tite’s design changed the main entrance from facing onto Cornhill, now to face onto the Bank junction.

The buildings that had once occupied the triangular space in front of the building were demolished, and it was opened up so that the full Corinthian portico of the new building faced directly onto the Bank junction, and seems almost to mirror the Mansion House across the junction.

The new Royal Exchange was opened in 1844 by Queen Victoria, with the following print showing the opening ceremony, and also how the new building had opened up the space around this important meeting place of City streets:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Within the pediment above the columns in the front of the building, there is a sculpture with the words “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the Fulness Thereof”, which was carved by Richard Westmacott the younger (his father of the same name was also a sculptor), and shows traders, historic, from across the world and from London. There are also small details such as a ships anchor to the left and pots to the right:

The Latin inscription, picked out in gold just below the pediment can be translated as “founded in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, and restored in the eighth of Queen Victoria”, to recall the founding of the first exchange, and the build of the third exchange to occupy the site.

There are numerous small details around the building, for example, the following has the date of the opening of the building as 1844 in Roman numerals:

And the cipher of Queen Victoria, the monarch who opened the latest version of the Royal Exchange:

It is interesting that the Royal Exchange is the only building that I am aware of in London where both the first version, and the latest, were both opened by Queens. Elizabeth I in 1570 and 274 years later, Victoria.

The steps in front of the Royal Exchange are also where the City of London proclaims a new monarch.

The current Royal Exchange has a glittering gold grasshopper from the arms of the Gresham family:

The Royal Exchange was not the only institution founded by Sir Thomas Gresham. His time travelling and working in Europe had also fostered an interest in learning, in trade, and in the benefits that the arts, technical and scientific achievements could bring to trade.

After his death, the executors of his Will founded Gresham College, to provide education across the arts and sciences, and which opened in 1597. A key aspect of the new college was that teaching was in English rather than Latin, which opened the college up to a much wider cohort of potential students.

The college originally operated from Sir Thomas Gresham’s old mansion in Bishopsgate, and then, rather appropriately for a period at the end of the 18th through the early 19th century, the college was based in the Royal Exchange.

A number of moves later, and today the college is based at Barnard’s Inn Hall, and offers a range of free lectures, both on site and online. There is a lecture on “Sir Thomas Gresham and the New Learning”, on the college’s website, along with many others, which can be found by clicking here.

There is also a whole series of lectures on London, which can be found by clicking here – perfect for winter evenings.

There are very many fascinating lectures and Gresham’s college continues to provide a wonderful resource for learning.

Thomas Gresham was perhaps the first person who truly understood international money markets and international trade. He served three monarchs, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, helping to keep them financially solvent, and during Elizabeth’s reign, his methods and contacts helped to stabilise the national currency.

He apparently could be rather unscrupulous in his dealings, including with his own family, and despite using his own money for the Royal Exchange, and leaving money for Gresham College, he appears to not have been particularly charitable during his life.

His name can also be found in the City with the naming of Gresham Street.

Returning to the Royal Exchange, the use of a building as a place for general trading faded later in the 19th century as specialist trading exchanges were set up to provide a place where trades could be made, meetings held, and news received in a specific and related set of commodities or services.

In 1939, the building became the offices of the Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and in the late 1980s, the company made substantial changes to the interior of the building, which included replacing the original roof, and an additional upper floor.

In 2001, the building was again refurbished, and reopened as a centre for luxury shops, restaurants and bars, and the Royal Exchange retains this function today.

Entering the Royal Exchange from the open space in front of the Bank junction:

The courtyard interior and roof today:

Next to the Royal Exchange, across Threadneedle Street is the Bank of England:

The Bank of England occupies a significant area of land of some three and a half acres. It has reached this size through a series of rebuilds and extensions over the years since the founding of the institution in 1694 as the Government’s banker, and arrival in Threadneedle Street in 1734, into a Palladian building designed by George Sampson, as the first, purpose built building for the Bank of England.

You can see the first Bank building marked in Rocque’s map of 1746, so much smaller than the complex of today.

The Bank of England has a number of key functions:

As the Government’s banker, the Bank of England is the only institution authorised to issue bank notes
Although they have shrunk over the past few decades, the Bank of England is responsible for looking after the country’s gold reserves
And although the Bank of England is owned by the Government, since 1997 the Bank has been responsible for independently setting monetary policy, for example, by setting interest rates

Rapid expansion of the Bank of England commenced after 1788 when Sir John Soane was appointed as architect to the Bank of England, continuing work on consolidating and expanding the Bank of England and working on the large curtain wall that was finished after Soane stopped working for the Bank in 1833, and which completed the security of the Bank’s complex.

The Bank of England buildings that we see today are the result of a rebuilding programme carried out between 1923 and 1939 by the architect Sir Herbert Baker, and which resulted in the demolition of most of Sir John Soane’s work, and resulted in a rebuild described by Nikolaus Pevsner as “the greatest architectural crime, in the City of London of the twentieth century”.

The Bank of England, facing on to Threadneedle Street, as it was before the rebuild that started in 1923:

A photo showing the extent of the rebuilding between 1923 and 1939, from the 1920s books “Wonderful London” (as is the above photo):

The photo above shows just how the curtain wall surrounding the bank forms an almost castle like structure. Also in the foreground, there appears to be a deep excavation, presumably part of the extensive below ground areas of the Bank.

The castle like curtain wall was supplemented by a Brigade of Guards detachment, who had barracks at the Bank to provide over night security, continuing this service until 1973.

The Bank of England partly faces on to the open space in front of the Royal Exchange, and as mentioned earlier, this was covered in buildings up to the construction of the 1844 building we see today.

There are two large monuments in this open space. The first is a memorial to the “officers, non-commissioned officers and men of London who served King and Empire in the Great War 1914 – 1919”:

The memorial was erected after the First World War, and an additional inscription was added at the bottom of the memorial for the Second World War.

The memorial records the names of all the London Battalions that fought in the Great War, and it is a reminder of how battalions were formed from local areas and of people with specific interests, so you have the 11th Battalion Finsbury Rifles, the 17th Battalion Poplar & Stepney Rifles, the 28th Battalion Artists Rifles etc.:

The second monument is to the Duke of Wellington, which was unveiled on June the 18th, 1844:

The monument is here, in front of the Bank of England and Royal Exchange as a thank you from the City of London for the Duke’s help in getting the London Bridge Approaches Act of 1827 through Parliament. There is a full explanation on a plaque on the monument:

The Duke of Wellington also now sits on an air vent to the station below, as can be seen by the grill in the above photo.

The plaque mentions that a piece of granite from London Bridge was set into the pavement by the statue prior to the removal of the bridge to Arizona:

Each of the buildings and institutions covered in this post deserve a dedicated and much more comprehensive post, such is the history at this key City of London road junction. The other aspect that deserves a much fuller write up is the underground station that sits beneath the road junction.

Bank Station was one of very few London Underground Stations that had no above ground buildings, however Bank can no longer claim this distinctive feature following additional entrances to the station across an ever expanding area, including the entrance to Bank Underground Station that is now on Cannon Street.

But as you walk around the Bank junction, there are a number of access points, where stairs lead you down to the station below:

Whether or not you agree that the Bank junction is the historic centre of London, it is a place where major routes across and out of the city all join, and it is a place where three key and early City of London Institutions have and are based.

The Royal Exchange, although no longer supporting its original purpose, once represented the trading heart of the City, Mansion House continues to be the public face of the City’s independent governance, and the Bank of England represents the City’s role in the financial management of the country.

If you are interested in a bit of a deep dive into two of the places covered, I can recommend:

Till Time’s Last Sand – A History of the Bank of England, 1694 – 2013 by David Kynaston
Gresham’s Law: The Life and World of Queen Elizabeth I’s Banker by John Guy
Sir Thomas Gresham and Gresham College: Studies in the Intellectual History of London in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis

In addition to the Gresham lectures, you may also be interested in the following film that I found whilst researching today’s post at the Imperial War Museum collection.

Titled Britain at War, it is a film which unusually is mainly in colour, and has a lengthy section on London starting at 8 minutes, 30 seconds (it will probably not appear in the emailed versions of this post. Click here to go to the website where the film will appear in the post.)

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Author Archives: admin

Lift 109 and the Transformation of Battersea Power Station

Late 20th Century Sculpture in the City of London

1. Temple Gardens, Lamb Statue, Margaret Wrighton, 1971

2. Fetter Lane / New Fetter Lane, John Wilkes, James Butler, 1988

3. 2 Dorset Rise, George and the serpent, Michael Sandle

4. Fleet Place, Man with pipe, Bruce McClean, 1993

5. Fleet Place, Echo, Stephen Cox, 1993

6. Queen Victoria Street, Baynard House, Seven ages of man, Richard Kindersley, 1980

7. Paternoster Square, Paternoster, Elizabeth Frink, 1975

8. St. Paul’s Churchyard, Becket, E. Bainbridge Copnall, 1973

9. St. Paul’s Churchyard, John Wesley, J. Adams Acton, 1991

10. Postman’s Park, Minotaur, Michael Ayrton, 1973

11. Old Change Court, Fireman’s War Memorial, John W. Mills, 1991

12. Old Change Court, Icarus, Michael Ayrton, 1973

St. Olave and the Coopers Arms Pub, Falcon Square and Silver Street

Covent Garden, Sunday Afternoon, 9th of August 1953

Euston Station and HS2 – A 2025 Update

Patrick Colquhoun and the Thames River Police

Lower Robert Street, Jenny’s Hole and the Tragic Death of a Child.

North Woolwich – A Station, Pier, Pleasure Gardens and Causeway

Soho Pubs – Part 3

The Spice of Life – Moor Street

The Cambridge – Charing Cross Road

Coach and Horses – Old Compton Street

The Pillars of Hercules – Greek Street

The Green Man – Berwick Street

The Bank Junction – The Historic Centre of London?

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1. Temple Gardens, Lamb Statue, Margaret Wrighton, 1971

2. Fetter Lane / New Fetter Lane, John Wilkes, James Butler, 1988

3. 2 Dorset Rise, George and the serpent, Michael Sandle

4. Fleet Place, Man with pipe, Bruce McClean, 1993

5. Fleet Place, Echo, Stephen Cox, 1993

6. Queen Victoria Street, Baynard House, Seven ages of man, Richard Kindersley, 1980

7. Paternoster Square, Paternoster, Elizabeth Frink, 1975

8. St. Paul’s Churchyard, Becket, E. Bainbridge Copnall, 1973

9. St. Paul’s Churchyard, John Wesley, J. Adams Acton, 1991

10. Postman’s Park, Minotaur, Michael Ayrton, 1973

11. Old Change Court, Fireman’s War Memorial, John W. Mills, 1991

12. Old Change Court, Icarus, Michael Ayrton, 1973

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The Spice of Life – Moor Street

The Cambridge – Charing Cross Road

Coach and Horses – Old Compton Street

The Pillars of Hercules – Greek Street

The Green Man – Berwick Street

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